We have all heard the expression that “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink”. This thinking can be applied to just about any aspect in life. In Internet marketing it is effective in describing what happens when a business does everything right to get a customer or prospect to their web site. Driving them to a site is one thing but converting them can often be another thing and a frustrating thing at that.

What can be the cause of someone not converting? It could be based on presentation. A sloppy site doesn’t instill confidence in an online buyer. It could be that your pricing is off. No one will buy a product or service that isn’t properly priced. Another thing that might happen is that the prospect just isn’t at the right stage in their thought process to buy no matter what the circumstances.

For the purposes of this post, however, I will be concentrating on another reason that happens more often than any of want to admit. It’s when you have done all of the right things to get the right buyer there at the right time but they still don’t buy from you. Why not? It’s because you have taken them to a dry well. An Internet water source with no water. In Internet marketing terms you have brought them to a site that has no content of value.

You see, while we throw around the term “Content is king!” rather loosely we have started to actually move away from the reality that content can either make or break your online experience. Years and years of flimsy sites with shallow content has conditioned web users to devalue a site very quickly based on the quality of the content. It happens in a split second but that short amount of time often determines whether you are going to get their business or not.

So how do you avoid having thin content on your site? Here are a few tips.

If you can’t write, hire a writer – Be honest with yourself. If you are not a good writer, that’s not a crime. It’s just a reality. If it is torture to pull a few sentences out of you then you are using your valuable resource of your time in the wrong way. Invest in a writer. It may not be cheap to get a really good one but it is an investment that could result in more sales online.

If your site is not well done, then get it done well – There are many instances where businesses have had the same site for years and just ‘lived with it’. Maybe it was done to avoid the cost of a redesign. Maybe there was another reason. Whatever the reason though it is not a good one. A poorly designed, old web site will only hurt you.

If you don’t know what good content is then find out – Your idea of strong, quality content may not match the same vision of a person that is much more important than you: your customer. If you don’t have a real grasp of content and its power then get someone to help right away. This kind of thing you either get or don’t get right from the start. Recognition of what is good vs. not so good content can be learned but it has to be taught first. It’s not just acquired through osmosis or luck.

So have you been spending valuable resources to lead a horse to water but only to have him find that there is no water there? If you have then it’s not their fault for not choosing you as their favorite place to buy your products. It’s your fault for leading them to a dry well.

So is your web site a rich reservoir of captivating content or is it a vast, dry wasteland that will make any visitor turn tail and run?

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.