Effective Web Writing

Professional communicators (like the august readers of Stratacommunications) are often prized for their writing skills and the ability to convey complicated thoughts clearly. These skills, however, typically have been honed through years of writing for publications and print outlets. So, what about the web? 

Moving to the web substantially changes the rules of what makes great copy: complete sentences give way to terse bullets, links drastically restructure the flow of thoughts through a piece and the unlimited capacity of the web becomes a liability over time. 

Careful readers are rare on the web, so it pays to change your style to support fast-paced visitors who skim instead of read. Your readers also have substantially more control over their reading experiences on the web than they do in print. In print, readers expect to be guided. Web readers expect to forge their own paths with links or use search to solve a problem quickly and get back to their busy lives.

If you keep the following tips in mind, you easily can improve the quality of the copy on your site, making pages more useful and your site more successful. 

How People Read Online

• They don’t. They skim.
• They read 20 to 80 percent of the words on a page—expect to be on the 20 percent side.
• Research suggests you have about six seconds to convince them of your content’s relevance.

What Web Surfers Pay Attention To

• The beginning of a page
• Bullets (first few words)
• LinksImages that don’t look like ads
• Interactive elements that don’t look like ads

Writing Style

Stay Focused

• People come to your site to solve a problem, not to browse aimlessly.
• Keep pages focused on as few topics as possible.
• Don’t force people to hunt for information; state your purpose up-front.
• Link to related material.

Write for Skimming

• Follow an inverted pyramid – start with a conclusion and then support it.
• Highlight keywords: link, color, bold.
• Include meaningful sub-headings (not “clever”).
• Use bulleted lists.
• Limit ideas to one per paragraph.
• Use half the word count (or less) of conventional writing.

Use Links Well

• Be consistent in how you use links throughout a page.
• Make sure links are long and descriptive: aim for 7 to 12 words.
• Never just link to the words “click here.”
• Never link to a naked URL (e.g., http://google.com).

Publish Only What’s Valuable

• Although it doesn’t cost a lot to add a new page, it can clutter your site.
• Always keep a potential audience in mind for any new page. 
• If it isn’t obvious who would read a document, or more importantly why they’d read it, it’s not worth posting. 

Surf On Over

If web writing is one of the tasks in your bailiwick, you should review our extended materials archive, available at stratacomm.net/better-web-writing. Or, for even greater improvements, call Stratacomm to help tune your site and transform your team’s ability to type their way to greatness, one click at a time. 

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