Content is King
No one reads the a web page for it’s HTML; it is the content that drives the user experience. It is the designer’s job to put it in an order that makes sense.
The Web is unlike any other medium.
Treating it as though users will read it like a magazine or watch it like television is a mistake. It is the client’s job to create the site’s content. After all, who knows their company better?
But writing for the Web is unlike most other forms of writing. It takes no special skills, but there are time-tested rules that create a more rewarding experience for your customers and turn that satisfaction into revenue for your company.
Surfers Skim Rather Than Read
With billions of pages of information available online, surfers don’t read so much as they skim your content. While this may sound like a bad thing—you worked hard on that copy—it can be turned to your advantage.
Use Subtitles Early And Often
Descriptive subtitles will catch a skimmer’s eye and may even pique their interest enough to make them read at least that section, if not the entire article.
Effectively written subtitles can give users the gist of what you're saying even if they don't read the entire piece.
Be Straightforward
Avoid clever puns in favor of expository subtitles—your skimmers may not share your sense of humor or worse, just not get the joke, which can turn them off and make them want to see someone else’s site.
Bullet points are also an effective way to catch the users eyes; always start them with an active verb, i.e., generating revenue, save money, created a buzz, etc.
Write From an Outline
A logical outline structure is the spine on which all of your copy hangs. Using an outline makes it easier for you to marshal your own thoughts and easier for your customers to follow those thoughts to the logical conclusions you present.
Write Like A Newspaper Reporter
Use lead paragraphs and expository prose—your users want to know who, what, when, where and why—the rest of the piece should explain the how.
Keep It Short
Once you’ve expressed your thought, stop and move on to the next. Each paragraph should convey no more than one or two key ideas. Keep the paragraphs short, no more than two or three sentences.
No Surprises: Tell Users Where That Link Is Gonna Take ‘Em
Telling a user to “Click Here” without telling them why just doesn’t work. Tell them what they’re gonna see on the other side of that link—if they’re interested, they’ll click it.
Using a contextual link is one way of dealing with this, for example, if we write a reference about Web Site Myths, we don’t have to explain that that link takes you to an article about just that subject.
Use A Consistent Tone Throughout The Site
Using a consistent tone—a voice, if you will—throughout your site is more professional. Your users can tell when a site’s just been slapped together out of disparate parts.
If you have many people writing for your company’s site, you may want to designate one of them as your site editor, to assure that consistent feel to your copy.
Write Actively
Our high school English teachers were right: writing in the active tense makes for a more compelling read. It’s OK to break it up with the occasional passive voice line, if only for contrast, but generally speaking, active is better.
Mix It Up—Break Up Longer Sentences With Shorter Declarative Sentences and Vice Versa
Copy written entirely in short declarative sentences is just as boring as copy written in sentences that run on for days. Mix it up—use both, it’ll read better. There is no such thing as a long sentence that cannot be broken into two or more smaller ones.
Plagiarism Is Wrong And Illegal
Plagiarism is wrong, illegal, dangerous and potentially very expensive.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes such practices dangerous to the health of your site (you can be removed from the major search engine’s indexes and your web host would rather shut down your site than run the risk of being accused of any sort of complicity) and expensive (copyright holders may charge you any dollar figure they like and it is guaranteed to not be cheap).
What We Need: All Content Must Be In Digital Form
All copy (text) must be digitized, created in a word processor, like Microsoft Word. We will not “type it up”—much less write—it for you. Our rates for these kinds of services are truly astronomical.
All graphics should be either .png's, .jpg’s or .gif’s. Generally speaking, all photos should be in jpg or png form and all graphics (logos, cartoons, clip art, etc.) in gif or png form. If you’re not sure which format to use, just ask us.
What We Need: All Copy Must Be Proofread Before Delivery
The content on your site is a direct reflection of your company's image. Spelling or grammatical errors give users the impression of general incompetence.
This is entirely unnecessary. You have total and absolute control over the quality of your site's content.
We cannot proofread your content for you in part because we don’t know as much about your company or your industry’s jargon as you. We will not be held responsible for spelling or grammatical errors we did not create.
A useful hint: we’ve always found it helpful to read our copy aloud—it allows us to find any awkwardness of phrasing and even the occasional misspelling or two. If you find proofreading mistakes, please resubmit the entire article.
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