Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Writing Web Copy that Gets Read

When you’re creating content for the web, your job is to make it easy for visitors to your site to (1) want to read your stuff, and (2) read your stuff.

In other words, content should be both interesting and well presented (i.e., geared to the unique way people absorb textual information on web pages).

Writing Interesting Content

Writing interesting content makes it easy for visitors to want to read your stuff. Interesting content is:

• In plain language, with no pretentious words or marketese
• Relevant to your target audiences (i.e., think about their interests as much as your own)
• Written with flair and personality, using strong, active structure and verbs (see ”Knockout verbs” at blogthecat.ca)
• Typo free and grammatically correct

Presenting Content to Best Effect

Every time I write web copy, I remember three percentages I got from Jakob Nielsen:

1. 79% of users scan the page instead of reading word for word
2. Reading from computer screens is 25% slower than from paper
3. Web content should have 50% of the word count of its paper equivalent

The implications of these percentages are huge. To make it easy for visitors to read your stuff:

• Use short sentences
• Break text into short paragraphs—many more than you would use when writing for print
• Rely frequently on bulleted and numbered lists
• Make sure your text comes across in short line lengths (like newspaper columns)—anything longer than three inches is too long
• Scatter subheads liberally throughout each page or entry
• Bold particularly important words or phrases (but don’t overdo it)

I could go on and on, but I won’t. I’m writing for the web, after all.

I think I got it! read read and read,write write and write!right?