Last week, I focused on three questions every webpage should answer. The questions were:
One more question every webpage should answer – #3: “Why should I care?”
This one comes from my library’s Executive Director, Gina Millsap. Another way to ask this question is “Why would I want to do that?” or “What’s in it for me?”
This is where your PR, marketing and promotion skills come into play. Why? Because you need to sell your content to your customers.
Selling? I hate selling – I’m a librarian, for peet’s sake!
Yep – I get that. But just putting information about something up on a website doesn’t mean people will attend that event, read that blog post, or check out that book. Sometimes we need to go a bit further, and work on convincing our customers to take those next actions I talked about in my last post.
The goal on a website is to move people from point A to point B – from reading a book review to actually checking out the book, for example. This isn’t selling as in “smarmy used-car salesman” selling … but it IS a form of selling, and a good organization learns to do this – on posters, in person, and even on our websites.
Answering “why” can be as simple as a brief explanation on why something is useful. For example – why should I apply for a library card? Because you get to read all your favorite books, and check out movies … for free! And you have already paid for it anyway (via taxes).
Look around your website, and see if you are answering the “why should I care” question. If not – rework your content so this question is answered up-front and often.
A couple days ago, we looked at the 1st question every webpage should answer: What can I do here? Today, let’s look at the 2nd question I think every webpage needs to answer: What do I do next?
This question is #2 for a reason. Question #1, What can I do here?, is pretty important – that’s the main focus of the page, after all. But once your webpage visitor has done that thing – read that article or filled in that form – they need to know what they can do next? Good webpages direct those next actions.
Here are some examples:
Ever visited a webpage, then looked around, wondering “what can I do here?”
If you have … that web designer failed!
I think every webpage should answer the question “what can I do here?” either visually, or by spelling it out:
On your library’s website, do people know “What can I do here” when they visit the main page? How about the catalog page, the “you didn’t find anything” page, or on your blog? At the comment box? On your Facebook Page even?
Think about it … and make sure to answer the question “What can I do here?”
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