With today’s website content management systems (CMS), it’s easier than ever for a business to add material to their website.

Unfortunately, these systems don’t insure your content is effective for marketing.

Many small business owners – who are novices at creating digital marketing content – get caught up in the creative ease of today’s powerful tools.  The result is a patchwork of irrelevant, counterproductive content.

Steve Jobs said:  “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like.  Design is how it works.”

Below are 5 types of easy to create website content that feel impressive, look cool, but have a negative impact on what works.

#1.  Irrelevant Images

In Colorado, we see endless SMB websites that open with a sprawling image of the Rocky Mountains.

From architects to yard care services, there’s a compulsion for Colorado-based businesses to use a stock photos of the mountains (NYC seems to have the same problem with the Manhattan skyline).

Flowery meadows, children running in a park, an anonymous, smiling woman in a call center…the list goes on.

Usually attractive pictures.  But with no connection to why a lead visits your website.   Yet they often dominate the critical space above the fold, where your value proposition and call to action should stand out.

Nobody came to your website to look at stock photos.  When they’re irrelevant to what you do, they disorient visitors, making them question if they’re on the right website.

Use relevant images, and make sure they don’t overwhelm your value proposition and call to action.

#2.  Short Story Long

Few things lose visitors faster than being confronted by wordy text, looming in long paragraphs.  Business owners think the story about their “years of experience” sells.

But visitors don’t care about your backstory.  They don’t need you to re-hash their problem.  Buzzwords like “best in class”, “industry leading”, or “mission-critical” dilute your message.

You have matter of seconds – not minutes – to communicate the value you offer and give people a reason to contact you.  Be clear and concise.

Avoid long paragraphs, which tend to get skipped by online readers.  Break your copy up with headlines, bullet lists, and bold text.

Keep sentences and paragraphs short.  Front-load your most important points – suspense doesn’t work on business websites.  If you save your most important message for the end, nobody will ever read it.

#3.  Creative Navigation

I recently chatted with a restaurant owner who had an inventive, stylish interior design.  He delighted in everything except the Exit sign above the door.

“I’d really like to have a different, cool name for the Exit sign”.   Like what? The Goodbye Portal?

Many business websites have this attitude with their navigation.  But your customers don’t want new names for your Home, About, or Contact buttons.  Creative, unconventional names are less clever than you think – and more confusing.

Good business website navigation is functional, unemotional, and predictable.   It’s called navigation for a reason.  If it’s doing anything other than its job, it’s working against you.

#4  Endless Pages

On a CMS, you can use a template to create a page in minutes.  This leads many businesses to create a new page for every topic that comes up, cluttering the site.

Your website lead-generation material needs to be as tight as possible.  Instead of creating new pages on a whim, you should look to cut everything that’s not essential.  Use your blog and social media channels are better places to develop your business story.

On your main website, if the page doesn’t funnel visitors towards converting, don’t make it.

#5.  Long Form Fear

Drawn-out forms that require unnecessary information are conversion killers.  This is why “Request an Estimate” is actually a poor performing call-to-action.  To get an estimate, people fear they have to provide details.  This takes time.

Web consumers are notoriously impatient.  The appearance of a long form will turn away otherwise interested leads.

Make your form as simple as possible.  For lead generation, it may be as little as an email.  Know that every extra letter the lead has to type, the greater the chance you lose them.

The best use of a CMS is to modify content so it works better.  This takes data and insight, but it’s what improves conversions.
Fluff is easy to create, which is why it has little value.