Three Questions every webpage should answer, #3: Why should I care?

One more question every webpage should answer – #3: “Why should I care?”

This one comes from my library’s Executive Director, Gina Millsap. Another way to ask this question is “Why would I want to do that?” or “What’s in it for me?”

This is where your PR, marketing and promotion skills come into play. Why? Because you need to sell your content to your customers.

Selling? I hate selling – I’m a librarian, for peet’s sake!

Yep – I get that. But just putting information about something up on a website doesn’t mean people will attend that event, read that blog post, or check out that book. Sometimes we need to go a bit further, and work on convincing our customers to take those next actions I talked about in my last post.

The goal on a website is to move people from point A to point B – from reading a book review to actually checking out the book, for example. This isn’t selling as in “smarmy used-car salesman” selling … but it IS a form of selling, and a good organization learns to do this – on posters, in person, and even on our websites.

Answering “why” can be as simple as a brief explanation on why something is useful. For example – why should I apply for a library card? Because you get to read all your favorite books, and check out movies … for free! And you have already paid for it anyway (via taxes).

Look around your website, and see if you are answering the “why should I care” question. If not – rework your content so this question is answered up-front and often.