Anyone who has done anything on the web knows that content is king. Sure you can have snappy design and all the proper usability and functionality, but an empty site attracts no flies… or users… or eyeballs. That’s what we want for our web-sites. We want to get people to our sites, keep them on our sites, and bring them back when they are away.
We can do this with content. I am not discounting form or function. I just want to point out that content is the sticky that keeps eyes on pages and actually carries the message we want them to see.
The two dimensions of content are quantity and quality. Quantity is an easy dimension to measure. It’s how often and how much. These guys need to be inversely correlated. That means the smaller the bites of content you dish out, the more often you have to push it out to the public. The less often you can provide, you better have some hearty meals.
So how big and how small? Well, Twitter pretty much set the standard on “how small.”
What about how big? I tend to use the measure of the bowel movement. If someone can read it in “one sitting” that’s a healthy chunk. Anything bigger is a little too much.
The web is not a magazine, and definitely not a newspaper. People get get 3-5 magazines or newspapers a week. There are millions of web-sites, and probably hundreds just like yours. Some better. If you don’t hit your points soon, users will find those points somewhere else.
So is this enough? Yeppers. Next we’ll take a look at quality. I got formula, and I am gonna share it.
Content is King. How Much Content?
Anyone who has done anything on the web knows that content is king. Sure you can have snappy design and all the proper usability and functionality, but an empty site attracts no flies… or users… or eyeballs. That’s what we want for our web-sites. We want to get people to our sites, keep them on our sites, and bring them back when they are away.
We can do this with content. I am not discounting form or function. I just want to point out that content is the sticky that keeps eyes on pages and actually carries the message we want them to see.
The two dimensions of content are quantity and quality. Quantity is an easy dimension to measure. It’s how often and how much. These guys need to be inversely correlated. That means the smaller the bites of content you dish out, the more often you have to push it out to the public. The less often you can provide, you better have some hearty meals.
So how big and how small? Well, Twitter pretty much set the standard on “how small.”
What about how big? I tend to use the measure of the bowel movement. If someone can read it in “one sitting” that’s a healthy chunk. Anything bigger is a little too much.
The web is not a magazine, and definitely not a newspaper. People get get 3-5 magazines or newspapers a week. There are millions of web-sites, and probably hundreds just like yours. Some better. If you don’t hit your points soon, users will find those points somewhere else.
So is this enough? Yeppers. Next we’ll take a look at quality. I got formula, and I am gonna share it.