Effective websites — Content

People don’t want to read online and don’t spend a lot of time doing it. Writing for the web is different than writing a manuscript or a brochure. Most Internet users scan, rather than read, words on a page. Hyperlinks allow the writer to summarize content and offer links so visitors can dig deeper into areas of interest.

What to include

Start by considering…

• What generates the most phone calls into your office?
• Which brochures are your customers picking up?
• What are you featuring in your print and television promotions?
• What do you want customers to know about your organization?
• What problems do customers want to solve?

It’s likely that visitors will have one or more tasks they want to perform when they visit. Try to anticipate what those tasks are. You'll need to make it easy to get from the home page to where they can do what they came there to do.

Use technology (JavaScript, animations, etc.) to enhance content but…

• Use it sparingly
• Test it thoroughly
• Understand the trade-offs

Think about including a function so customers who can’t attend meetings can still voice their opinions on policies.

Don’t forget the ‘value added’ pieces that make customers keep coming back to visit…

• Recipes
• Seasonal ideas
• Home ballgame schedules
• Community calendars

and other timely topics from around your service area.

Writing effective content

Web content works best when presented as short reference documents that can be read non-sequentially. Chunk your information into discrete parts and use links to connect to detailed or relevant material.

Write according to the “inverse pyramid” principle. Start with a short conclusion so that users can tell what the page is about without reading it.

To write effectively for the web:

• Communicate in the language of the user
• Remove all excess words
• Make the first word an important, information-carrying one
• Write in plain language: no puns, no cute or clever headlines
• Include only one idea per sentence
• Keep sentences to 15 words or less
• Paragraphs should be two to 5 sentences
• Use short, familiar words and action verbs
• Summarize content in bulleted lists

Online titles and headlines are often displayed out of context, especially in a list of search engine results or in a browser’s bookmark menu. In either of these cases the user doesn’t have any background context to help interpret the headline.

Unless the title makes it absolutely clear what the page is about, users will never open it. Headline text has to stand on its own.

When writing page titles skip leading articles like “the” and “a” so they don’t get indexed in a search engine under “The” with everybody else.

Managing content

Work according to three basic rules:

1) Make it fast to load.

• Many visitors will be using dial-up modems.
• A good rule of thumb is to try and keep the entire page content to no more than 35KB for the first page. Interior pages can have up to 50KB.

2) Make it content rich

• Pages should have at least 200 words.
• Give the visitor information rather than marketing messages.

3) Design it to be found

• Make each page’s title descriptive to that page.
• Make the descriptions ‘indexable’ by search engines.

Read more about creating an effective website regarding design, maintenance and planning.