For more information contact Professor Dan Remenyi at dan.remenyi@mcil.co.uk

Content can be described as any information on a website that enhances the presentation through text or interactivity. The only reason a user will come back to a site is if he or she finds it useful. Therefore a website should give people what they want and lots of it. The content should satisfy the aims of the website. Good content is therefore key to an effective website.

Easily Accessible

Content should be easy to access and find. It should follow a natural progression allowing the user to move at his own direction and pace. Therefore an effective navigation system is required. Content should be chunked, that is broken up into easily digestible amounts. Pages that are only composed of scrolling text should be avoided. Having an internal search facility is also a key element in making a site’s content easily accessible.

Well Presented 

Content should be well presented through the appropriate use of text, graphics and animation. It is important to use text, graphics and animation as cleverly as possible to enhance the presentation while not taking too much from the site’s performance. The key is to innovate rather than adding flashy animations and graphics to make it look as if you’re one step ahead of the rest.

Level Of Advertising

Content is the number one reason that surfers stay and revisit a site. No surfer wants to waste time visiting a site just to be bombarded by worthless advertising. A surfer visiting such a site will feel cheated and will probably not return.

A marketing site with content that is simply a continuous sales pitch will not be very effective. The emphasis should be on giving useful information on the product or service that enhances the users ability to make an informed decision, while providing a constant ability to take action by making a purchase.

Useful to Useless Ratio

The content presented on the site should be of the highest quality. It is important to focus the site’s content to the users’ needs rather than just producing Megs of rubbish. Graphics or animation used should add value to the website rather than reducing performance without providing any real benefit to the user. Similarly language used in the text of the site should be clear and concise. It is important to proof read such content many times before including it on the site.

Extensive and Original Information

Content should be as extensive and original as possible. If it is extensive it will encourage people to stay by giving them what they want. Extensive content should also encourage users to come back as a user can only absorb so much information in one visit. Therefore extensive content makes a site effective in the two must important ways. It makes surfers stay and it makes users come back. Original content is essential because it gives a site a sense of uniqueness and makes a site stand out on the Web.

Degree of Substantiated Information

It is important that information on a website is substantiated. When publishing information on the Web it is important to remember that it can be evaluated under the following five headings.

Authority: Who is responsible for the pages, what are their qualifications and associations, can these be verified?

Currency: Are the dates when the site was created and last updated clear?

Coverage: What is the focus of the site? Are there clear headings to illustrate an outline of the content?

Objectivity: Are biases clearly stated? Are affiliations clear?

Accuracy: Are sources of information and factual data clearly listed, and available for cross checking?

Level of Interaction

Expression and communication are based on representations such as language and imagery. Any medium is in part a means of conveying content. Therefore a medium such as the Web that is especially tailored to presenting content through the use of text, graphics and animation offers a huge potential to convey content to users. It is therefore essential that a website strives to be as interactive as possible and thus takes advantage of this opportunity to interact with its users, that is provided by the Web.

FAQ's

Frequently asked questions provide a site with the ability to quickly introduce an unfamiliar user to the site’s content quickly.

Amount for Free

A common debate with regards to sites selling information such as books is how much to give away for free. If a site is trying to sell information then there is definitely a point of diminishing returns. If a user feels that they have taken a large portion of the information for free then they may avoid paying to get more. Therefore it is important that the content reinforces the information that the site is trying to sell without giving away the lion’s share.

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