5 Key Signs Your Content is Failing Your Users

Key Signs Your Content is Failing Your Users

Keeping relevant content is important if a website expects their users to stay on their site. It’s easy to make mistakes when it comes to a website’s content. It’s easy to fill up a website once and never update it or to add to it regularly with articles that don’t have substance. A good website should update on some sort of normal basis while also providing content that their users want to see. Here are some signs that show your content is failing your users:

The content isn’t published on a regular basis

A website that never publishes anything new is just as bad as a website that publishes every now and again without any pattern to it. If a website is to keep users coming back for more they need to give their users something more to come back to.

Users want to go to a website that updates on a regular schedule. They can learn to expect when new articles or pictures will be up. This keeps users interested in what the website is doing. When a website doesn’t update often, users go on the site looking for something new and feel disappointed when they can’t find anything. This lowers their interest in the site and can make it less likely that the user will return to the site.

The content isn’t relevant

The website might be everything that the creator imagined it to be, but that hardly matters if the content isn’t everything that the users need it to be. The creator of the site should know what their users want to see. The content should be something that interests and engages users of the website. If the site cannot do this, then it is simply failing their users. If users can’t find the content they want, they will likely leave the site and look for what they need elsewhere.

Even if the content of the website is what the users want, it’s not going to keep users around if the content is displayed in a way that doesn’t actually say anything. The content should both be relevant and readable.

Websites put up things for their users to read, so websites should put up things that are worth reading. Making sure that the content is relevant at the moment, and that it will stay relevant is also important. Something may get 100 reads one day, but that doesn’t matter if it’s never read again. Content should be able to be useful weeks after it is first posted, if not longer.

The content isn’t unique

Engaging and interesting content is important. What’s more important is having content that helps a website stand out from its competitors. Many websites have articles and videos on the same topics. A website needs to make sure that their article on one topic has something that makes it unique from an article on the same subject on a different website.

The content can be personalized to fit the website and the primary demographic that it draws in. Sticking with what interests the website’s users can help to keep them on the site, which may encourage them to show their friends the content as well. A unique website will be more memorable than one that blends in with all of the other sites on the Internet.

Users don’t interact with the website

People love to leave comments, share great articles with their friends on social media, and take polls on websites. A site that has these features will be able to get people to interact on their site more than a website that does not have these features. Users like to have the option to contribute in some way. Taking away that option gives users less to do on the site, which could stop them from returning to the site at a later time.

Keeping track of what users like and share can give a website creator a good idea of what their users like to see and what sort of articles don’t get much attention. Once a website creator knows these things, they can more easily put up content that their users care about instead of wasting time putting up things that won’t get many views.

The more people that share a site’s content, the more new users are likely to be drawn into the site. Users sharing content is basically free advertising, and what site doesn’t want something like that?

The content doesn’t draw in new users

What’s the point of adding new pieces to a website if no new users see them? If the articles or other content on a website isn’t bringing in new users, then they could be failing your users. If a website’s content is good, then the creator should see an increase in searches for their content, more people sharing their content on social media, and traffic from old and new users. Websites, especially business based sites, want to build subscribers.

One way to do this is to open up special offers for users that use the site regularly, users who sign up receive e-mail updates on the sites, or to people who invite their friends to see the content. All of these things are simple ways to increase a subscriber count without driving current users away.

If a website’s content is already failing, then there are ways to turn things around. Here are some tips on how to improve your website’s content.

• Update the content that users care about. This will help to keep users coming back for more.
• Post interesting and unique content. Users don’t want to read something that sounds like it could be copy and pasted from just any website. Make the content unique to the site.
• Give options for users to interact with the website. Users love to share and comment great content. This will also help to draw in new subscribers without having to pay for additional advertisements.
• Provide special offers for subscribers. Giving discounts, special e-mail offers, or other rewards for returning users can help to keep the users the website already has as well as get new subscribers. Special content doesn’t need to be expensive to gain new subscribers.

Every website has the potential to have great content. With the right content, updates, and user interactions sites can keep and gain new subscribers. New users are sure to come to your site in no time– if you keep these tips in mind.

If you have other signs that show content is failing, please share then in the comment section below.

 

About Author: Katrina Manning is a content marketing specialist who has penned thousands of articles on business, tech, lifestyle and digital marketing for a wide variety of global B2B clients. She mostly writes for Leadpath  and she is also the author of three books and is currently working on her fourth. In her free time, she enjoys fundraising for charitable causes, playing with her cat and baking.