Many Websites mirror firms dull and boring

The writer Gertrude Stein once condemned the pleasant but bland city of Oakland, California with the observation that "there's no there there". Nothing much to see, nothing much to do. Unfortunately, there are a lot of Oaklands out there on the Web places that have never heard the expression that content is king, or else don't quite appreciate what that means.

On company Websites, content in its purest form is text. Yet textual content is also the weakest part of many Websites. Some people confuse good textual content with lots of words, even if they don't actually say much - or say too much.

Others go for emaciated Websites, with so little text they're hardly worth a visit. And either of these sins can be exacerbated by poor organisation. It doesn't matter if you've taken the time to supply good content if it's difficult to find - site visitors will quickly give up.

Thinking about your company site in terms of a corporate presentation can be a useful exercise to help decide on good content. A good presentation conveys corporate personality, has a consistent style, is concise and clear and to the point. Central points get special emphasis. That's what you want with a Website - you don't want your site to be like the boring corporate presentation that makes an audience eye the door.

The basics of good textual content begin with good section headings on your home page, the top tier of information headings (like chapters in a book). You'll probably want a section for general corporate information, news, products and services, press information, contacts, and perhaps recruitment. A section of links to further useful sites can be very attractive to site visitors, if done well. Once users click into one of these main sections, a menu of sub headings for each main section can guide them further into the site.

For each section, you'll be presenting some text, probably mixed with some graphics. There's one rule of thumb here: keep it short. In general, unless you're an online magazine or newspaper you don't want to offer viewers huge chunks of text (at least not in general information sections of a Website). Think PowerPoint - after all, your viewer is looking at a screen; text running off the bottom of it doesn't welcome viewers in but more likely, puts them off.

A company Website should be working for you. Site visitors are probably doing a bit of research to find out more about your company and its services. You don't want to bore them with too much detail. Instead, you want to give key information that helps them understand what you have to offer, and encourage them to contact the company in person for the detail. If you do have lengthier information, such as explanatory documents or reports you think people might find useful, you can make select items available, but don't throw them arbitrarily on the Web.

In general:

your text should be brief, clear, concise, informative;

put a fearless editor in charge of your site's copy for consistent tone and content;

check grammar and punctuation;

keep content up to date or the site will come across as stale and out of touch;

use the Web regularly yourself so that you understand the medium and how it works best.

Karlin Lillington is at klillington@irish-times.ie