This question was asked on Quora.com and I wrote a small answer over there, but then I decided to do a bigger post here on my blog. So how much content does your customer need to read before he or she decides to do business with you? First of all, do you really believe that your content can make a difference? I think for the sake of this blog post, and for that matter, even for the sake of future blog posts, I am going to assume that you take your website content really seriously and consider it to be an inveterate part of your marketing strategy.
With that out of the way, how much content is needed before the actual business happens? It depends on what niche you are dealing with and what product or service you are trying to sell/promote. Websites representing well-known brands might not need as much content as a lesser-known brand might require. For instance, Forbes.com might need less content to promote their business content section compared to, say, credible-content.com. Nonetheless, you will find tons of content on Forbes.com. Why?
The primary reasons why a well-known company like Forbes.com needs as much content as any other website are:
- The Internet creates a level playing field for bigger and smaller players so it doesn’t really matter whether you are Forbes.com or credible-content.com when it comes to optimized content and better search engine rankings
- People can access your content from all over the world and it isn’t necessary that in your part of the world Forbes.com is as well-known as in the USA or even in India
These are the reasons why Forbes.com requires massive amount of content just like any other website – it needs to convince its visitors into doing business with it and for that they have to visit the website again and again.
Doing business on the Internet is all about credibility and trust and these two traits can only be developed with lots of quality content.
It’s not just a brand that decides how much content is going to be read before people decide to do business with you. It also depends on the requirement. Here I will refer to the example I used at Quora.com
If you want to purchase an iPhone you are going to purchase it and for you the only difference is from where you are going to purchase. If price is not an issue you might straightaway purchase it from the vendor’s website or one of the major gadget e-commerce websites. If it is an issue, you might explore around websites like ebay.com or buy.com.
But what if you are not brand conscious and you just want a phone that runs the android operating system? There might be 100s of smart phones running on android and if you don’t have a preference you might have to read a lot before you eventually decide what make you are going to go for.
So in order to decide how much content your visitors need before purchasing your product or service you need to figure out
- What drives your visitors to purchase the product or the service you are offering
- How much information they need in order to make up their minds
- How familiar they are with your product or service
- How often they visit your website
- How much trust and loyalty you enjoy among your audience
Once you have figured out these things you can easily make out after how much content or how many visits they will be ready to do business with you.