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Writing Content for Your Website
Be concise
As a general rule when writing content for the web, you should reduce the amount of text you use to less than 50% of what you would use in printed materials. Otherwise your visitors may stop reading before you have communicated what you intended. Remember, people reading web content are generally there to find information as quickly as they can, so use small words and short manageable sentences. Be precise and to the point.
Don't use fluffy language or industry jargon in your web copy. Keep in mind the best writing style for your target audience and incorporate the words that they use to describe your business. This will provide the added benefit of increasing your rankings in the search engines for keywords that your clients use when they search for your type of business online.
When writing content for your website, keep in mind that too much information on one page will probably not keep your potential customers attention and they may come out of your website faster than they came in!
Listed below are a few pointers to help you provide your website visitors with the information they seek in an inviting and navigation friendly format.
Be concise
As a general rule when writing content for the web, you should reduce the amount of text you use to less than 50% of what you would use in printed materials. Otherwise your visitors may stop reading before you have communicated what you intended. Remember, people reading web content are generally there to find information as quickly as they can, so use small words and short manageable sentences. Be precise and to the point.
Write for your audience
Don't use fluffy language or industry jargon in your web copy. Keep in mind the best writing style for your target audience and incorporate the words that they use to describe your business. This will provide the added benefit of increasing your rankings in the search engines for keywords that your clients use when they search for your type of business online.
Avoid long pages with scrolling text
Separate different topics of information into bite-size chunks, and allow your visitors to find the individual topics that interest them easily. Long pages of plain text can be both boring and overwhelming.
Headings, heading and headings
Use them! Identify the content of short paragraphs and label them usefully so that readers will know immediately if the information is pertinent to them. If burdened by wading through things that don’t interest them, your readers may be too impatient to find what they were looking for in the first place.
Use teasers and hyperlinks to provide more detailed information
The great thing about the web is that it is a non-linear and interactive medium. If viewers are interested in more details on a topic, allow them to access these details by linking to the information. Don't take up valuable real estate on main pages, such as the homepage or section overview pages, with information that may be irrelevant to many of your viewers.