What is so Hard About Writing Content?
The toughest part of any website project for us at Zipline is not the concept, it is not the sitemap, it is not the design, nor is it the programming. The most difficult part of any website project is obtaining content to put into the website. To be honest, at Zipline we’re not writers. I may make fun of Britney Spears, my fiancé, and IE6 users on my blog but that doesn’t qualify me to write compelling sales copy for our customers. That leaves us with a couple of options. We can hire a writer and get good quality copy at a premium or our customers who know and understand their business, can write their own copy. Unfortunately, due to budgets most of our customers opt for the second option with greatly varying results.
Don’t get me wrong. I find that most of our customers are very intelligent and really understand their market. If they weren’t good business people they wouldn’t be running successful businesses. The problem I find is that just like me, most are not writers. Part of writing for the web is creating web friendly, search engine optimized copy. Admittedly, these are not easy concepts to understand. When you write for the web you have to realize most people aren’t going to read the copy start to finish. If you are lucky enough to have someone read it they will probably scan the headline and read the first couple lines. If you haven’t hooked them by then, they’re already moving on. On top of that, writing is hard and it takes a lot of time most people don’t have. For many, writing marketing and web copy is worse than homework. Sometimes I feel like the parent, trying to get my 6th grader to write a paper on the civil war while a Family Guy marathon is on.
On many occasions, we have had a website completely programmed and then spent weeks waiting for our customers to provide the copy. Had they been willing to hire a writer the website would be online generating business. To solve this problem we came up with a couple of solutions I thought I would share. The first, we have started offering two prices for each website. We create content managed websites so our customers have the ability to populate their own content if they so desire. In these instances, the customers get a lower price on the project but they must populate the site once the framework is completed. The customer must pay the balance of the project before the website framework is turned over to them. Once paid, they can take as long as they want to complete the project and it won’t affect our cash flow. If they would prefer to have us populate the content, they are given a deadline to provide us with the content. If they do not meet this deadline they will begin getting billed for the project. For most this serves as a firm deadline and a motivator to the customer to get the content created in a timely fashion.
We realize our customers are busy. We have had customers stretch out content creation for more than 6 months after development was complete. This obviously causes workflow, cash flow, and tracking problems for us. In addition, it means there is no ROI on the customer’s new website investment. By encouraging the customer to get the copy done in a timely fashion we both benefit. Also, thanks to this strategy we’re no longer in a losing position, as long as we follow our own policies! If any of you have any good ideas I would love to hear them. This strategy works for us but it won’t work for every company. I know we’re not the only interactive firm facing these types of issues. I have talked to numerous friends who are in the same life raft we are.
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