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Today, I’d like to talk about content–choosing the appropriate and unique content that helps your website truly reflect your personality or your brand’s personality. We thought about this a lot when re-designing my new website.

We wanted it to reflect the multiple and varied aspects of my business, while of course also staying true to the core of what the Preston Bailey brand is and what it means.

Depending on your business, this can be a tricky dance. Some folks have told me they have a hard time striking the balance between saying too much and saying too little.

I also know that sometimes we want to think of ourselves (or our business) as the most fascinating thing in the world, but with the plethora of information and similar websites out there, we have to do our best to boil down our most unique and interesting personality traits. We can’t forget that our website is a resource and should be functional for the web user.

Here’s a checklist I’ve created that will, hopefully, help you determine how much your website reflects your brand’s personality:

• Pick three words you want people to use when they’re describing both your website and your business. Use these as a starting point for how you evaluate your website. For example, if your three words are: “luxurious, high quality and unique,” ask yourself if each individual word is reflected on every page of your site. Does your homepage feel luxurious? Is the language you use unique? Which leads me to the next bullet point…
• Does the “voice” of your website reflect your brand values and principles? By “voice” I mean, both the text and the visuals you have on your website. Ask yourself this: Do my visuals do a good job of representing myself/my business? Do they reflect the three words I chose above? Does the language I use reflect how I want people to think of my site? For example, if one of your words is approachable or humorous, is your website actually funny?
• Do your words and images contradict each other? Sometimes when we focus too much on making a quick decision that we forget to step back and look at the bigger picture. Stop and take the time to thoughtfully curate and create the different elements that make up your web pages. The time you put into this will be reflected in the strong brand message your web audience receives.
  

  You never want someone to say, “I don’t get it. What do they do?”

• Is your most important information front and center? We’ve discussed this before, but as I said before, if the main goal of your site is to tell people how to contact you, make sure that information is easily accessible. This can be as simple as putting your telephone number on every page, or highlighting it in a different color or font size.
• Do you offer information or advice that can be found somewhere else? You want the answer to this question to, as much as you can, to always be no. You need to give folks a reason to come to your business’ site instead of someone else’s. Think about all the things you do from everyone else that is different (not necessarily better–because that can be subjective) and make sure that it is obvious on your website.
• Do you strike the right balance between promoting yourself well and shameless self-promotion? The reason most folks will come to your website is because they want to get information. Maybe they’re evaluating different planners and they want understand what it’s like to work with you. The worst thing you can do is turn them off by putting up a million articles about how amazing you are, or how spectacular your work is. My motto has always been to show what I have and let the client decide for themselves. If your work and talent is strong enough, it will always speak for itself.

Keep in mind, this list can go on forever. I just wanted to give you a starting point for evaluating your website so you can make sure the content truly reflects you or your brand. Please share, what are three words you want people to use when describing your website or your business?