You’ve taken all the right steps with your content – you’ve worked with a freelance writing service to create engaging articles and posts, you’ve promoted and tagged and even hashtagged them, so you’re fairly confident your content’s ready for prime time. Not so fast – browser specifications could still be standing between your content and your customers. RankRaiser’s Marita Meegan encourages companies investigating bounce and drop off to check for visit patterns on individual pages; a page that doesn’t render properly on mobile devices may be the culprit.
Don’t Make The “Sales” Mistake
Those new to merchandising or retailing are often cautioned it “isn’t about them” – meaning that they should stock their stores with what the customer will buy, not necessarily what they want to sell. The same wisdom holds true in terms of operating systems, browsers and devices within your office. Just because your design team or freelance writing service employees might be working on the latest, sharpest mac doesn’t mean your customers are following suit.
Follow your metrics and determine where your visitors are coming from, what systems they’re using to get there, and their browser preferences. Playing to those strengths will ensure that your visitors have a seamless experience to look forward to, and software incompatibility warnings aren’t distracting them or driving them away from your message.
Take Advantage Of Every Opportunity
Remember – even if 99% of computer users are in love with a certain browser, operating system or mobile device, you can bet that there are plenty of customers to be wooed or retained within that 1%. With the pace that technology evolves and changes, it’s more important than ever to ensure that your message doesn’t end up replaced by a broken link, spinning icon, or endless loading bar. Even if you decide to optimize some content for newer, more advanced accessibility routes, always make sure there’s a clean, one-size-fits-all piece of content to welcome in all visitors, with the option to hop to the optimized content.
It Affects Branding, Too
The days when a misplaced navigation menu or poorly-aligned design template could be forgiven in a consumer’s eyes are coming to a close. Even in offsite applications like dynamic email campaign content, visual issues like these are enough to affect brand perception. Don’t let a rush to publish wreck a carefully-plotted timeline of rollouts; your content deserves at least as much attention to detail as your images. If possible, try publishing in a sandbox and viewing the content in different browsers and operating systems before pulling the proverbial trigger – obviously, rushing to fix a live problem results in much less precise solutions than those that are planned before launch.
Negotiating great content creation with your freelance writing service is only half the battle for consumer hearts and minds. Once you have that content, packaging it to appeal to a wide audience with reliable visibility takes a beneficial tool and turns it into a true advantage over your competition.
Delany M is a freelance writer available for work at WriterAccess.
