Writing for the Web

The Web is different

• Reading a Web site as like looking at a billboard through binoculars.
• You can’t see it all at once, and you have to concentrate.
• The resolution is much lower than in print, and you can’t easily tilt the screen or adjust your distance.
• Light is projected into your eye rather than being a diffused reflection.
• There is rarely a single linear path through a Web site.

Understand the push-pull models

 We’re used to pushing information at our audiences. It’s the “spray and pray” approach.

Now they’re pulling information from our Web sites – getting what they want when they want it.

Like cats, our visitors go where they want when they want.

Understand what makes a Web site work

All five components shown at right are important.

• Disorganized information on an unreadable page won’t be effective.
• Stale, outdated ideas won’t work.
• Interactivity isn’t essential, but it certainly improves the visitor’s experience if it’s done well.

Analyze the audiences

• examine shared contexts – are you assuming too much understanding?
• what are they seeking when they visit you? have you designed the site around that?
• what do they already know or think about your product and your organization?

Clarity – getting through

• Web users have the attention span of a five-year-old; if they get confused they will leave
• knowledge isn’t power – structured access to knowledge is
• your job is to report, interpret, annotate, and link; hypertext is a powerful tool for doing that well

Build in quality

• updates, additions, maintenance are critical
• don’t use other people’s writing as-is unless it fits
• test thoroughly

Build in interactivity

• it keeps the reader engaged
• but only if you design a dialogue, not a monologue
• reward each action with new, relevant information
• test how it works

Organize it as you write it

• design it for online – you can’t just shovel it over from print
• watch the length — it has to be about 50% shorter online unless it’s a “destination page”
• use PLAIN language — because it works better online
• chunk it, design it as hypertext
• learn how to write link text that doesn’t break the flow
• give up control to the viewer
• understand that nearly everyone scans instead of reading
• structure for multiple audience(s) – hypertext helps you do
  that
• write with a human touch — the impersonal Web needs that
• design in measurement and feedback

Present it

• the writer can’t stay aloof from the details of presentation
• don’t be bullied by management or designers or techies
• use graphics wisely and not too much
• remember you don’t have much font control
• use titles, headings and white space to improve readability
• think hard about how to let visitors print the page if they want to
• use links wisely — to add value to your site, not to send visitors away.

Provide navigational aids

• provide a brief introduction and orientation on each page so
  any page can stand alone
• check all the links, ideally with a link-checker tool
• indicate information status when necessary (new, not new but
  recently reviewed and confirmed, etc.)
• write links so viewer can tell where they lead
• provide meaningful titles