Writing Effective Web Content

- By: Akhil Shahani, 2008-03-15

So, you’ve got this great business idea which needs an information rich portal to support it. As erstwhile editor of the school mag, you fancy your chances of putting together some creative writing as web content. Right? Wrong, we say! Writing for the Web is quite different from writing for print publication. Why is it so? Mainly because of the way readers access and read information on the net.

People use the Internet mainly to find information, not to read it. People who read printed books expect a linear progression from one chapter to another, and are used to long pages of text. However, when they access the web for information, their expectations are very differ¬ent. Users tend to scan text on screen, pick keywords, sentences, and paragraphs of text. They do not want to see excessively heavy web content.

Visitors to a website read slower off the computer screen compared to when they read from a piece of paper. Large blocks of text, is therefore, unsuited to this media. Also, when large quantities of written matter take time to download, visitors are easily bored, or worse, scared off.

You should keep these differences in mind when creating the content for your business website. The first step in the writ¬ing process is audience profiling - know who you are writing for and what their preferences are. Understand your audience and write for them.

To make your life easier and your website more productive, we have put together the 5 most important guidelines for creating effective web content:

Be concise: Write only half of what you would for a print publication. Keep the pages short to avoid having to scroll down the screen. Long, flowing text is not suitable for on-line delivery. Get the users’ attention with clear, concise writing. Avoid "marketese" - using buzzwords and extravagant adjectives. Keep promotional writing within reasonable limits.

Write for scannability: Make your pages easy to skim through and locate the key points of interest. Use the "inverse pyramid" structure - write the major points at the beginning, and larger chunks of information under subtopics. Write topics so that they can be read in any order. Break up the information into smaller and easily readable pieces. Use headings, lists and colored text to draw the viewers’ attention.

Let the users choose: Most important, leave the choice to the reader. Let them decide how much information they need. Provide hypertext links for longer, more detailed pages. Express just one main idea under each topic. Eliminate unnecessary information and provide links to related topics, which can be accessed at will. Explain where the link will take them and what it contains so that the users can judge for themselves. Let your visitors go where they want to, when they want to.

Make it personal: The web is a very impersonal environment and many people are quite intimidated by it. Write in a friendly tone, but do not talk down to your audience. Try to keep your writing style approachable and credible in order to encourage users to trust you and therefore purchase from you.

Edit and review content: Your web site is only as good as the content that is on it. Review it periodically to make necessary changes and remove old, outdated information. Proofread! Proofread! Proofread! to avoid those irritating typos.

Concise writing, information chunking, and hyper linking to more detailed information will help you deliver good, readable on-line content that will sustain the user’s interest. And that’s the key to effective web content.

Hi, I'm Akhil Shahani, a serial entrepreneur who wants to help you succeed. If you like to work smart, check out Smart Entrepreneur . It's full of articles and resources to help you start and grow your business successfully.