As part of our effort to deliver a well designed, professional website, we always advise our clients to write the copy for the About Us page such that it is written primarily for the visitor whilst simultaneously optimised for search engine’s requirements i.e. contains no more than 5% of search terms per page.
Please thus keep in mind and use words or terms through which you would like to be found via search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.
In order to assist clients to write up the text for the all important ABOUT US section of your site, we have included a few questions that if answered, could form the foundation of one’s copy/text.
Please provide answers to the following questions:
About US (page 1)
- In what year was the business established?
- What is your main area of activity?
- Does the company have any subsidiaries / divisions if so when were they established?
- Which market/s do/does the company or its subsidiaries service?
- What is your company / product / service’s unique selling point, e.g. lowest price, best quality, most advanced etc.
- List 3-5 unique benefits of using your product / service.
- What other products or services does the company offer?
- When did the company start offering these additional products or services?
- Why did the company decide to offer these additional services?
- Which geographical territory does the company service?
- Who currently owns the business?
- What is the current management’s professional background (e.g. does the MD have 20 years experience in this field for example)
- What is the company’s mission?
- What is the company’s vision?
- Details of any memberships or associations that the company is a member of as well as details of any standards (e.g. SABS, ISO, Halall ) to which products or services conform.
- Month and year in which these were achieved/awarded/registered. Please include logos as well as website links to these institutions.
Site Structure
Please also decide on what tabs/products/services you would like to include and how you would like to structure the site. Some examples include:
- Page/Tab 1 About us
- Page /Tab2 History
- Page/Tab 3 Products
- Product category 1,2,3 etc
- Product 1,2,3 etc (1page per product if you have info or multiple products per page)
- Page/Tab 4 Services
- Service category 1,2,3 etc
- Service 1,2,3 etc (1page per service if you have info or multiple services per page)
- Page /Tab 5 BBEEE Status
- Page /Tab 6 Our People
- Page /Tab 7 Gallery (If provided for in your package)
- Page /Tab 8 Other/Social responsibility/Partners/Knowledge Base etc…
- Page /Tab 9 Blog
- Page /Tab 10 Contact us
- Provide links to other sites / suppliers / partners / general information / associations etc.
Content guidelines and copyright
Web designers are highly skilled and their time is limited and expensive. Do not expect your designer to type out your content for you as this will likely be charged for at their standard rates.
Text contained within pictures, faxes, photographs, book pages and magazine or newspaper clippings are not editable and may attract content generation charges. Scanned or .Pdf documents are not always editable and may have to be typed out afresh incurring standard copy generation charges. If you can highlight and copy text within a scanned or .Pdf document, it can be edited. Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, pdf documents can sometimes be converted to text.
All copy should be reviewed, edited, spell checked and where necessary the material’s suitability should be verified prior to it’s being published to one’s website. Where large amounts of data capture is required, it may be prudent to employ the services of part time students at more competitive rates.
Website Translation Options
For a modest extra charge, the option exists on most of our sites to have translation software installed enabling foreign language visitors to your site to request an instant machine translation of each page. Although results may vary, in our experience these translations have proved to be 80 -90 % grammatically accurate. This option is ideal for any organisation doing regional or cross border trade into Lusophone or Francophone African countries or trading into Europe, Asia or the Americas. Up to 42 different language options exist. Once installed, no further costs are incurred and any new content published to one’s site will be automatically translated on request by your visitors. Any number of language translations can be active simultaneously without incurring any extra charges. A typical Translation deployment option will look like this.
Please feel free to discuss this option with your account manager before work commences on your website as the number and placement of language icons could affect the overall site design and structure.
Copyright Infringement
Almost without exception, all published material whether it is in a newspaper, magazine, website, book, radio or TV program or advertisement, is subject to copyright.
Unless you have the express written permission of the owner/publisher/broadcaster and are prepared to cite the author, publication, date published and publisher’s details, books, magazine and newspaper articles, pages, clippings or photographs should not be published on your site. Sometimes publishers will allow excerpts of no more than 50 words to be used, provided they are cited and credited in full. In all cases, the publisher’s permission must be sought.
An alternative is to re-write the content in your own words and style. In this case you may want to acknowledge the original author and publication but not necessarily inform him/her. Flouting of copyright laws could land you with a very expensive court case.
Pictures, photographs, graphics and designs
We would appreciate it if you could send attached to your e-mail, all the required logo’s, pictures, graphics etc in their original .jpeg formats and not embedded in MS Word documents for example as this involves up to 5 extra steps on our side to extract the picture.
Only photographs, pictures and graphics that you own ( i.e. that you have generated either by taking the photographs yourself or paid a third party to generate ) should be published on one’s website.
Should you have many, large file size photographs that you would like to send, please do not attach more than 5 Mb per e-mail. Large files could be sent using any one of numerous free online file sharing services.
Our favorite service is Sendspace. http://www.sendspace.com/
Simply enter your details, attach the files and enter the recipient’s e-mail address and they will recieve a link to go and “fetch” the files.
Ideally pictures and photographs should be provided in their original .jpeg formats. Unless photographs are intended to be used for your site’s header graphics, All photographs should be optimised for the web (a process where a digital photo file size is reduced such that it is unperceivable to the naked eye) before attaching them to your e-mails. Digital cameras have for many years been shipped with some form of manipulation software enabling one to perform this task. There are also many free software programs and services available online.
Our favorites include:
Webresizer http://www.webresizer.com/resizer/
All Windows operated PC’s contain a FREE graphics application called Microsoft Paint which can be used to optimize, resize and edit your pictures and photographs. To activate it, pin it to your start menu or send it to your desktop go to:
Programs >
Accessories >
Paint (then right click to make your preferred selection)
Stock photography
Should you feel that you do not own any suitable photographs or graphics, many stock photography websites exist enabling one to purchase suitable material. Expect to pay between USD $ 3.50 up to USD $ 300.00 per photograph, graphic or video. Note that in most cases a low to medium resolution ( 72 to 96 dpi ) photograph will suffice for the web but if you intend to use the photograph or design in your magazine or newspaper advertisements, you would be well advised to pay for a 300 dpi (dots per inch) version which could then be downscaled for the web and left as is for print without suffering any pixilation. If you would like us to source stock photograph and graphics on your behalf, we would expect upfront payment for any photographs selected for download.
Online Video
The ubiquity of faster, more reliable broadband connections has spurred an insatiable demand for high quality rich media, especially online video.
Should you or your company have suitable video material that you would like to pull through onto your website, please mention this to your account manager who will advise you on how best to leverage this important asset.
Should you be interested in exploring this option but lack any suitable video collateral, Malachite Digital can design a complete video production and distribution solution that integrates seamlessly with your website and your online promotional strategy.
Please feel free to contact us should you have any queries or require any additional information.