At Computer Courage we build websites for a diverse group of customers, and we see a common challenge for our clients: writing site content takes a long time. Our websites feature a great content management system (based on WordPress) to take out all the technical challenges of managing content on a website, but the process of writing content is still a big job. Most of our clients don’t have copywriters on staff and either want to or have to write the content themselves. This process often leads to delays and frustrations. I’ve seen many wonderful website projects slowed down or even stopped because the client is busy and can’t find the time to write content for the website.
My Content Writing Challenge
I experienced the challenge of content creation when I built this website. I wanted to be thorough, explanatory, and SEO friendly so I did what I’ve always told clients to do: I built a “sitemap”. I drafted a long list of all the pages I wanted to write for the entire site and created their menu structure. The result was a daunting list of about 55 pages I needed to write (see the full list on our sitemap). I worked through them one by one, but it took months of writing at odd hours to complete while I ran the company and spent time with my family.
A Changing Web
In today’s modern web, visitors have less and less time to explore websites and are often using small mobile devices. This has created a trend toward simpler websites and shorter visits. Our analytics show that 50% of all visitor traffic is on the same 3-5 pages for the great majority of our customers. They rarely visit the deep content that cause so much hassle and delay our site launches for so long.
The New Content Strategy
This experience and research led me to a new, simpler strategy for content writing. I now advise my clients to focus on writing their “Primary Pages”, those 3-5 pages that really matter most to visitors, before going on to build a sitemap or worry about the deeper pages. Often these Primary Pages look something like this:
- Home Page
- About Us Page
- Products (or Services) Page(s)
- Contact Us/Conversion Page
With these pages written, many of our clients decide to launch the site as-is. A site with its Primary Pages in place feels simple and concise, not broken or incomplete. There are no “coming soon” messages, no placeholders, no broken links. Some clients choose to stop there and let their Primary Pages represent them for the long term, while others choose to keep writing behind the scenes, and launch their deep content later.
For Computer Courage, our “Primary Pages” are:
- Home
- About Us
- Computer Repair
- IT Support
- Web Design
- Contact Us
Whether you plan on keeping your content simple or doing a full sitemap, I strongly suggest starting with the Primary Pages and creating a functional website, then deciding how to proceed. Feel free to let us know how this has worked for you in our comments section below.