If you own a business, the question of having a web presence is a no-brainer. These days, people are turning to the web for their information, and simply having the basics (address, phone, business hours, etc.) can help your customers find you.
If you decide to populate your site with MORE information about your business, keep in mind that writing for the web is a special craft. Web users can easily leave your site if they get bored or don’t find the information they’re looking for. It’s important to keep their attention, and keep your writing simple.
Web readers don’t read, they scan. With so many sites, links, ads and other places to go on the web, readers just don’t take time to fully read every word on every site. Use keywords, bullets and headlines. Keep your sentences simple. Readers want to find exactly what they are looking for, and you may only have their attention for a few seconds. Here’s a thought-provoking article about how readers scan web pages. It makes you think twice about how your organize your paragraphs.
Start at the end. Journalists already know this one. The whole point of the story is summed up in the first few lines. The rest of the details follow in order of decreasing importance. If your readers leave the page, you know they at least read the most important information.
Know your audience, and write accordingly. If you want to project a professional image, avoid web slang and shorthand (wuz up, LOL, etc). If your audience consists of young teenagers, save the words you learned in The New Yorker for another day.
Learn HTML. You don’t need to be a computer genius to learn the basics. A little HTML will allow you to use images or link to other pages. Images, when used properly, will catch your readers’ eyes and break up large chunks of text. Links help direct traffic to and from your web site, which increases your search engine rankings. Here’s a site to get started learning HTML.
Edit! Read through your text to make sure it shines. Walk away. Go eat lunch. Come back and read it again. Read it aloud. If things sound funny, make changes. Give it to a skilled friend for some fresh perspective. He or she could offer tips you hadn’t thought about. Avoid redundancy where you can, and do not rely heavily on spellcheckers; they can miss the simplest grammatical errors. If a customer sees sloppy grammar on your website, what’s stopping them from thinking you’d make a sloppy business partner?
Link smart. Don’t overwhelm people with a bunch of links in the body of your text. Save the most interesting and informative ones for the end of a paragraph or article. And be considerate–give people an idea of what they can expect if they choose to click the link and leave your page.
For more information about web usability, check out Don’t Make Me Think, a book by Steve Krug.
Love that book. It’s a necessary read for anyone who writes for the web. I wish they’d tested how people read blogs. I wonder if it would be any different than the typical F pattern.
Hi - Nice article and still as true as ever. I’ve been writing for my own site and this has been a great help
I’ve found this article on keeping web copywriting fresh that’s interesting too.
sarah
So much of what you say is true — especially about learning HTML. It’s so easy; I don’t understand why more bloggers and business people don’t at least learn the basics, seems like a no-brainer to me, too.
Getting someone to read and comment on what you have written also helps: http://writinghappily.com/essay-writing/find-a-writing-partner-to-improve-your-writing/
Thanks for the comments.
A pretty good book I’ve found about this topic is On Writing Well, by William Zinsser.
It’s billed as a nonfiction writing guide, but the advice is as good as any I’ve come across on how to put sentences together.
Also, just found this article about writing for the web. I met the author at a bloggers conference a couple of years ago.