I’m putting together a simple site with a focus on providing a few web services. As a way of adding content and legitmacy, I’ve written some articles on the topics of the web services I’m providing. Should I create a separate page for these articles, or just pop them in their respective page?
Ex:
If I write a small article on Mobile Development, should I place that in the Mobile Development Page (MobileDevelopment.HTML) where I list some details of mobile development that I will be providing? Or should I have an articles.html page where I place the artciles that I make references to throughout my site?
I’m not planning on “blogging” or consistently uploading new artciles. I’m just not sure if I should mix the service’s details, and articles about the service on the same page?
The point and purpose of your main page is to get people to sign up for web services? If so, the articles go elsewhere. Unless you’re targeting Asian markets, clutter is not good.
Think about what people are supposed to do, or what you want them to do, when they get to your page (assuming they land on your main page). What is your conversion goal for that page? (meaning, what single thing do you need them to do?). If this is a page selling web services, your main goal is usually to get them to click on the first step towards signing up. Getting users to click there is that page’s main conversion goal, but clicking for more information elsewhere can be a secondary goal.
Is it signup in X-number easy steps? Show that! In a clean interface.
Your “articles” are less important. You’d rather people signed up than read the articles. The articles are there for those who won’t sign up immediately anyway and want more information first. So either the site menu, or a separate article menu as in a sidebar might make more sense, and then as you said, the mobile stuff article on a dedicated mobile page.
Each page with these articles might also want a call to action back to the first step of signup as well (“Sign up now!”)…
The main point of my site is to drive people to the contact page and either submit a contact message, or give us a call.
We are into custom web design and developing web applications for small businesses.
We don’t sell any premade web services, neither do people have to sign up for anything. The website is merely a point for a customer to get an idea of what we can do for them, but ultimately to make contact with us.
the way I’ve thought about it, is most of my leads with be through word of mouth and networking/business cards. “Yeah, check out my website for details on what we do and who we are, and then give us call and we can discuss further”
This is my approach. All the content on the site is really for the skeptics who need some extra convincing.