Too many businesses, large and small, turn people off with self-absorbed websites.

Does your website content merely brag about your company's "industry leading" products, features and services? If so, you might be boring your visitors and helping out your competition.

Customer-centric content is a quick and effective way to engage visitors and turn them into customers.

Plus, from a branding perspective, how you communicate with your target market says a lot about your company's true focus. Are you striving to provide clients solutions and opportunities, or are you just out to grab additional dollars?

To be a true customer-driven business, you should be orienting all business messages and processes to customer wants and needs. In fact, the driving force of your company and culture should be to meet those desires to the fullest.

Here's a typical and all-too-common example of self-centric website content:

We're the best learning management system

(Company name) is the revolutionary online training system. We've won awards...

What's this company focusing on? Its customers' needs? Supposedly not.

Here are some guidelines to help establish customer-centric website content:

• Get familiar with your target audience before writing. What are their concerns, for instance?  This helps to position your product or service as a solution to their problems.
  
  
• Promote what visitors want or need -- not what you sell. Your product's won awards? That's terrific, but be sure to accentuate what it means to your visitors.
  
  
• Focus on benefits rather than features. What does your visitor have to gain from your product or service?
  
  
• Speak to, not at your customers. Build a rapport with your visitors by using a second-person voice, such as "you" and "your."

By communicating to potential clients with content geared to their needs and wants, you'll keep them on your website longer. And the longer you keep their attention, the more they'll realize how you can fulfill their desires.

Remember, in the age of the Internet, consumers are in the driver's seat. If you're not catering to your visitors, the likes of Google, MSN and Yahoo will quickly guide them to a competitor that does.