How to write effective content for your website: building trust with your reader

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Feb 4

Writing content for your website can make it all feel salesy, cheesy, dull or big-headed at best.

And connecting with your customers on a more-than-surface level will be the difference between them leaving your site empty-handed versus sticking around to learn more.

Maybe *hopefully* even turning into a paying customer.

Writing about yourself, with your head stuffed inside the business, can be difficult without an outsider’s eye to see the wood for the trees.

This can easily make your website words waffly and weird.

And no one like a show off.

(You don’t want to feel like you’re showing off. And your future customers aren’t going to pay attention to a business that acts like a show off either.)

➝ So how do you write about yourself and your business and connect with future customers WITHOUT being big-headed?

➝ How can you be empathetic to your future customers, but not sound whiney?

➝ Is it possible to be sensitive to your customers’ needs whilst selling at the same time?

Here are my 4 absolute must-haves for your website content to start building trust with your audience.

1. What do you do and how are you different?

First and foremost, it needs to be obvious what you do when someone first lands on your website.

Not only do they need to have a clear, immediate idea of what your services/products are, but they need to know who you are targeting and why you aren’t just like everyone else in the [insert what you do in here] industry.

If someone lands on your website and it isn’t immediately obvious why they should stay on your website, guess what - they’re not going to stay.

How do I make sure I’ve done this on each of my web pages?

This can be communicated through what I like to call your “unique-ness factor” statement. I’ve written a whole blog on how to construct it here.

2. Why do you want to have a website in the first place?

Do you want to showcase and sell your services/products?

Is your site informative, aiming to get people to sign up to an event or mailing list?

Are you looking to spread awareness of a certain issue or problem?

Your goal is whichever of these things is the most prevalent to you and your business.

So we need a game plan to help you get more people fulfilling that goal. The best way to do this is to funnel them through your website in as few steps as possible, giving them as few options to go off-piste as you can. The less opportunity they have to go rogue, the more likely you are to convert them into a paying customer/a new name on your email list/a believer or follower of your cause.

How does that affect my content?

Throughout the page, you need to ensure you’ve got multiple clear calls to action. This could be in the form of a button, text link or custom image/graphic that also serves as a link.

Use motivational and proactive terminology, for example: ‘get X today’, ‘stop feeling Y’ or ‘take me to Z now’ which help to create a sense of urgency.

3. Why should someone else trust me enough to give me their hard earned cash?

Building trust is imperative to persuading a potential customer that you are worth the investment.

Make it clear what benefit your products or services have to the end user. Is it solving a problem that they have?

Is it making something easier for them or saving them time, stress and/or trial and error?

Will they experience something unique through your approach that no one else in your industry has thought of before?

Is it better value for money?

Credibility is limited to your experiences and qualifications, so you need that something extra to show your audience you’re not completely biased: you’ll sound arrogant if you’re simply telling everyone how fantastic you are.

How can I reinforce this on my website?

Sometimes you might feel like you’re just selling yourself and it sounds inauthentic.

But using social proof and testimonials is a fantastic way to get a vote of confidence from a past customer or client.

If there is a particular point you’re making on your website about how your product/service seeks to save someone a particular struggle, immediately back it up with a testimonial from someone who experienced that same thing to heighten its potency and power of persuasion.

4. What if I offer more than one service, or a huge range of products?

It IS important to give your potential customers an idea of what you sell or do. But no, you should not showcase them ALL on your website home page.

Don’t spell out every detail of every package or product on your home page. Just listing the categories of products you have is mega dull.

Either way people are going to get bored quickly and if that happens they’re not going to stick around.

You want to intrigue people, encouraging them to click through to the next page of your website: getting one step closer to fulfilling those website goals we defined at the start.

So, how do I stop people from leaving my page prematurely?

If you offer a selection of services, what is the best way of summing up their overall impact or benefit?

Can you split your services or products into similar categories?

This could be broken down into the different types of people your products or services are designed for or the range of technicality in your offerings.

You could even arrange your services and products according to the end user’s previous experience or fitness level.

Keep it short and sweet. Make sure to add a button or text link to encourage your audience to learn more, bringing them one step closer to buying/signing up/engaging.

Use bullet points to list the benefits of each different category or even create a little preview of what they can learn more about if they click through to your services page.