Writing For The Web - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 93
About This Presentation
Title:

Writing For The Web

Description:

Language has Biggest Impact on User Experience. Language is as important as design ... Pull quotes (a newspaper convention) and sidebars help break up monotony ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:133
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 94
Provided by: fritzmc
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: Writing For The Web


1
Writing For The Web Master II 2007
Fritz McDonald Creative Director fritz.mcdonald_at_st
amats.com 800-553-8878 ext. 5151
2
Agenda
  • Embracing Language
  • Understanding your Audiences
  • Creating Visual Content
  • Writing Persuasive Web Copy
  • Improving your Writing
  • Developing Searchable Web Copy

3
  • I. EMBRACING LANGUAGE

4
All Web Users Have Goals
  • Locate knowledge
  • Complete a task
  • Amuse themselves
  • Keep up/keep current
  • Interact/connect

5
Language has Biggest Impact on User Experience
  • Language is as important as design
  • All users make decisions based on what they read
  • Web languageBraille, foreign, audible, etc.
  • Users should be called Readers
  • All web content starts with words
  • All web sites communicate through language
  • Reading number one thing people do on the web

6
What Readers Often Find Bad Language
  • Catalogs and brochures
  • http//www.atlantic.edu/program/degrees/aasDegrees
    /accountDegree.htm
  • Information dumps
  • http//arngren.net
  • Non-visual text layouts
  • http//www.barclaycollege.edu/Information/default.
    asp
  • Non-persuasive prose
  • http//www.smc.edu/comm/
  • Too many choices
  • www.classesusa.com

7
Just Plain Bad Writing
  • Your inquiry about the use of the entrance area
    at the library for the
  • purpose of displaying posters and leaflets about
    Welfare and
  • Supplementary Benefit rights, gives rise to the
    question of the
  • provenance and authoritativeness of the material
    to be displayed.
  • Posters and leaflets issued by the Central Office
    of Information, the
  • Department of Health and Social Security and
    other authoritative
  • bodies are usually displayed in libraries, but
    items of a disputatious or
  • polemic kind, whilst not necessarily excluded,
    are considered
  • Individually.

8
Why Does This Happen?
  • Copy is institution-driven, not audience-driven
  • Copy developed independently of architecture and
    design and is an afterthought
  • Many dont yet acknowledge that writing is a big
    part of what online experience is about
  • Process failure
  • No editorial or review process
  • Not enough writers
  • Too many writers
  • Content moves too slow or fast
  • No single-source authority

9
Writing for the Web is Crucial to Quality Sites
  • Quality of copy differentiates successful Web
    sites from others
  • Successful Web sites employ professional writing,
    editing, and publishing strategies and tactics.
  • Successful Web sites make life easier for
    readers, have large and loyal audiences, help
    accomplish institutional goals, and present an
    accurate and productive image to the world.
  • Successful Web sites do not depend on technology
    to be successful.

10
What Web Writers do
  • Provide accurate, compelling copy
  • Convey right messages to right audiences at right
    time and place
  • Guide audiences to information, education, and
    action
  • Create language that draws search engines
  • Write new copy and creatively repurpose existing
    material
  • Develop copy in ways that make the site
    accessible to all readers
  • Lay foundation for successful Web sites

11
Step 1 Define your Goals
  • Establish institutional/departmental identity
  • Exchange information
  • Inform
  • Instruct
  • Motivate
  • Persuade
  • Provide news
  • Provide technical support
  • Recruit
  • Request information

12
EXERCISE 1 LIST YOUR AND PRIORITIZE YOUR CONTENT
GOALS.
13
II. UNDERSTANDING YOUR AUDIENCES
14
Your Most Important Concern
  • What is critical to your readers?
  • What are they not getting?
  • How do they consume content?

15
Reader Characteristics
  • Practical and impatient
  • Conservative
  • Skeptical
  • Fickle
  • Seeking guidance

16
Web Readers are Impatient
  • Less experienced readers spend an average of 35
    seconds on a homepage and one minute on an
    interior page.
  • More experienced readers spend an average of 25
    seconds on a homepage and 45 seconds on an
    interior page.
  • (Web User Experience 2004 Conference)

17
Web Writers Need to Find Out
  • Who are we talking to?
  • What are their tasks?
  • How can we help them be effective?
  • How do we measure task completion?

18
Identify Limit Readers/Audiences
  • Prospective students
  • Prospective graduate students
  • Prospective faculty
  • Community leaders
  • Alumni
  • Donors
  • Parents
  • Current students

19
Create Personas
  • Focus on a representative audience member/type
  • Identify their goals and tasks (1-3)
  • Create fictional identities
  • Build from usability research

20
Personas Should Include
  • Personal Information
  • Home, age, hobbies, media habits, personality
  • Academic Information
  • Major, GPA, high school or program year,
    extracurricular interests
  • Internet Usage
  • Experience, primary uses, favorite sites, hours
    online, computer connection
  • User goals
  • Information preferences, academic goals,
    outside needs, competitor information
  • University objectives
  • Connect to faculty and research, retention,
    promote accomplishments

21
Profile Dhalsim the Dutiful
  • Its 7am Friday morning and Dhalsim has been up
    for at least an hour. He
  • has been performing a literature review for his
    professor and wants to
  • impress him. It is an honor to work with Dr.
    Gildafresh, a world-renown
  • Engineer. He knows it is important to make his
    family and others who
  • depend on him proud.
  • Lately he has been thinking a lot about what he
    should do next year since
  • hell be graduating. He is torn between staying
    in the United States and
  • returning to India. He would like to be near his
    family, but it is more
  • important that he finds a good job to help
    support his other siblings.
  • Getting a good job after graduation was
    ultimately why he chose Electrical
  • Engineering as a graduate degree. His whole
    family has been sacrificing a
  • lot to pay for college in the U.S. and he feels
    obligated to help finance his
  • other siblings high education opportunities.

22
Written for Specific Readers
www.providence.edu
23
EXERCISE 2 IDENTIFY KEY READERS AND SKETCH A
PERSONA FOR ONE.
24
III. CREATING VISUAL COPY PART 1
25
Print Content
  • Linear and provides pre-determined order
  • Documents form a whole provide entire
    information
  • Uses familiar conventions table of contents,
    prefaces, indexes, etc.
  • Never changes

26
Web Content
  • Non-linear and encourages visitor to take their
    own path
  • More flexible and up-to-date
  • Content divided into multiple hyperlinked pages
  • More informative and less conceptually driven

27
How People Really Read The Web
  • Surveys and studies consistently show that around
    80 percent of test users always scan a page first
    before reading a section word by word.

28
Reading vs. Scanning
  • Progression is word by word across the page and
    down
  • Key information is not visually called out
  • Meaning is gathered from the syntax (the way
    words are put together to form phrases or
    clauses)
  • Progression is rapidly around the page as user
    looks for key words and phrases
  • Key information is visually called out
  • Meaning clusters around key words and phrases as
    the user finds them.

29
Typical Web Page
  • Lots of running copy
  • No visual call-outs
  • Left-to-right, top-to-bottom progression

30
Scannable Web Page
  • Headers and short intro paragraphs
  • Photos and graphics
  • Bulleted lists, boldface copy, boxed copy

www.parisreview.com
31
Encourage Scanning Visually
  • Illustrations
  • Photos with captions
  • Large type
  • Graphics/photos
  • Color

32
For Scannable Copy, Write
  • Short paragraphs
  • Heads and Subheads
  • Bulleted Lists
  • Highlights and boldface
  • Quotes and sidebars

33
Map Section Content Copy
  • Use outline, storyboard, flowchart, 3 x 5 cards,
    diagrams
  • Provides organization and layout of your section
    content
  • Determines length type of pages
  • Transforms your section into site or sub-site

34
How to Map Copy
  • Study site architecture and content inventory
  • Study the templatelayout, design elements,
    position of images photos, links
  • Develop an eyepath between elements and text
  • Visual hierarchy
  • Guides readers
  • Write in relation to visual environment

35
EXERCISE 3 MAP A PAGE OF CONTENT TO MAKE IT
SCANNABLE.
36
IV. CREATING VISUAL COPY PART 2
37
Readers Web Preferences
  • Users can enter a site at any page and move
    anyway they choose
  • Online version of a given topic should be about
    half word count of print version
  • Users read about 25 percent more slowly from
    screens than from paper
  • Users dont like to scroll through blocks of text

38
To Meet Reader Preferences
  • Make every page independent able to explain
    itself
  • Link to background or explanatory information
  • Place most important information at top of page

39
Write Classic Newspaper Structure
  • Header that summarizes
  • Lead/intro paragraph delivers the conclusion
  • Body copy delivers the details
  • Who, what, why, where, when

www.latimes.com
40
Long vs. Short Copy
  • Short copy invites, introduces, and persuades
  • Top-level pages
  • Long copy should be deeper on site
  • Two clicks in
  • Long copy needs to be well-written and relevant
  • Compelling message, info, etc.
  • Gives readers what they want to hear
  • Long copy doesnt need to look long
  • Break up text into small paragraphs with heads,
    subheads

41
Start With Good Heads
  • Main idea of the page and clearly indicates
    content
  • No longer than seven words on average
  • Clear to reader why its important
  • Use four-level text hierarchy on 1st and 2nd tier
    pages

42
Break Up Text
  • Start page with conclusion (inverted Pyramid
    style)
  • Two- to three-sentence paragraph of introductory
    copy to summarize
  • Short paragraphs divide information into useful
    chunks
  • Each paragraph should contain one main idea
    second paragraph contains second main idea, etc.
  • Sometimes one or two sentences per chunk

43
Love Subheads
  • Keep readers moving forward
  • Emphasizes word, phrase, or idea from copy
  • Breaks up blocks of copy into readable chunks

44
Depend On Lists
  • Best way to highlight important information
  • Eases reading and slows down scanning eye
  • Satisfy the list-hungry
  • Use more lists than print, but limit items to 9
  • Use numbered when sequence is important
  • Use bulleted when sequences is not important

45
Favor Quotes, Sidebars, Captions
  • Pull quotes (a newspaper convention) and sidebars
    help break up monotony
  • Should be more abbreviated in length than body
    text
  • Must be focused on a specific subject area
  • Captions must uniquely identify illustration,
    table, or photo

46
EXERCISE 4 REWORK YOUR PAGE TO MAKE IT VISUAL
AND SCANNABLE.
47
V. WRITING PERSUASIVE WEB COPY
48
What Marketing Copy Can Do
  • Send consistent messages
  • Balance institutional integrity with the need to
    appeal to various audiences
  • Extend institutional brand and build/enhance
    reputation
  • Communicate character

49
Map Marketing Content
  • Work from existing architecture
  • Provides organization and layout of your
    marketing
  • Clarifies and balances tone
  • Determines when to sell/not sell

50
Marketing Tips
  • Write like you are closer to the reader than in
    print
  • Balance formal/informal tone
  • Write to your audience one-to-one
  • Use 2nd person POV You
  • Be honest and accurate
  • Validate claims links to off-site supporting
    information, third-party input/endorsements (i.e.
    academic rankings)
  • Be sensitive to tone and subtext
  • We will respond to your email within 24 hours.

51
Emphasize Benefits Over Features
  • Whats in it for me?
  • Get readers attention right away and be specific
  • Use concrete heads and subheads and action verbs
  • Avoid hyperbole, negative constructions, and
    superlatives (most, best, perfect, greatest)
  • Make calls to action clear what should readers
    do
  • Use human voices

52
Features-driven Copy
  • At X college, we pride ourselves on the personal
    attention our
  • professors give their students. Our
    student-to-faculty ratio is 131,
  • and our class size averages 22 students.

53
Benefits-driven Copy
  • The only teacher/student ratio that matters is
    11. Many colleges
  • talk about small classes and how that facilitates
    interaction. Well,
  • elevators are small too, and not much
    communication happens in
  • there. The point is this real interaction
    happens between two
  • people, one on one, and thats the kind of
    teaching that takes place
  • at Hollins.

54
http//www.yorku.ca/web/index.htm
55
A Homepage Welcomes, Persuades, and Guides
  • The biggest mistake made by most homepages is
    having too much clutter
  • Communicate how your site/section works
  • Establish an institutional brand while conveying
    your sub-brand
  • Convey what you can do for readers
  • Keep readers feeling like they belong

http//www.ucla.edu/
56
Keep in Mind
  • Its not an essay
  • Its not about you
  • Its not a brochure

57
EXERCISE 5 REWRITE A PAGE OF YOUR SECTION TO
EMPHASIZE BENEFITS.
58
VI. IMPROVING YOUR WRITING
59
Web Copy Should
  • Be direct, clear, and concise
  • Balance information and appeal
  • Speak to different audiences differently, yet
    maintain consistent tone

60
Good Web Writing To Do List
  • Avoid clever or cute headings
  • Limit metaphors
  • Use simple sentence structure
  • Control humor and stay away from puns
  • Use an informal but not incorrect style when
    appropriate

61
The Web Doesnt Need Much Copy
  • Full sentences and paragraphs get in the way of
    reader needs
  • Readers want to get to the point
  • Most people dont read full sentences on the Web
  • Write concise links that give precise info

62
Follow Orwells Rules
  • Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of
    speech that you are used to seeing in print.
  • Never use a long word when a short one will do.
  • If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut
    it out.
  • Never use the passive voice where you can use
    the active.
  • Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or
    a jargon word if you can think of an everyday
    English equivalent.
  • Break any of these rules sooner than say anything
    outright barbarous.

63
Overwritten
  • Macbeth was very ambitious. This led him to wish
    to become king of Scotland. The witches told him
    that this wish of his would come true. The king
    of Scotland at this time was Duncan. Encouraged
    by his wife, Macbeth murdered Duncan. He was thus
    enabled to succeed Duncan as king (51 words).

64
Better
  • Encouraged by his wife, Macbeth achieved his
    ambition and realized the prediction of the
    witches by murdering Duncan and becoming king of
    Scotland in his place (26 words).

65
Omit Unnecessary Words
  • Weak linking verbs
  • You will want to test your Web pages with
    different browsers.
  • Test your Web pages with different browsers.
  • Prepositions with verbs
  • Wrong I have separated out different attributes
    that can be applied to the tag.
  • Right I have separated different attributes that
    can be applied to the same tag.
  • Too many Prepositions
  • Wrong The most important part of the
    functionality of the site is meeting the
    marketing goals.
  • Right A sites most important function is
    meeting marketing goals.

66
Omit Unnecessary Words II
  • Intensify words and vague adjectives (very,
    really, a bit, mainly, etc.)
  • Wrong Ipods are very common and very popular.
  • Right Ipods are common and popular.
  • Phrases that needlessly repeat meaning
  • Wrong The Writers Guideline is a service
    provided free of charge.
  • Right The Writers Guideline is a service
    provided free.
  • Redundant adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, and
    phrases
  • Wrong This revolutionary new product adds audio
    to your site.
  • Right This revolutionary product adds audio to
    your site
  • Verbs converted to nouns
  • Wrong Take into consideration the cost of
    maintaining data.
  • Right Consider the cost of maintaining data.

67
Turn Copy into Links
  • "In the following section you will be provided
    with a range ofinformation that should help you
    decide which is the rightmortgage for you."
  • vs.
  • Click here to find the right mortgage for you.

68
Key Editing Questions
  • Is this clear?
  • Is there a simpler way to say this?
  • Is there a shorter way to say this?
  • Is this necessary?

69
To The Point
http//dukemed.duke.edu/
70
EXERCISE 6 REWRITE YOUR PAGE FOR CONCISION.
71
  • VII. THE ART OF EDITING

72
Active Voice
  • Emphasizes person or thing acting
  • Built on strong verbs instead of forms of to
    be, past participles, and strings of pronouns
  • Helps make text concise, interesting, and clear
  • Active voice
  • You can use graphic frames to keep footers
    visible at all times.
  • Passive voice
  • Graphic frames can be used to keep footers
    visible at all times.

73
Word Choice
  • Avoid buzzwords and clichéd modifiers
  • State of the Art, Cutting-edge, Academic
    Excellence
  • Favor simple words over ten-dollar words
  • Use instead of utilize
  • Ease instead of facilitate
  • Use concrete, precise, definite, specific words
  • Ten instead of a lot
  • Bright orange instead of colorful
  • Blue-eyed instead of beautiful

74
Determining Pace
  • Pace should be appropriate to reader
    expectations, voice, tone
  • Pace should be varied by page and by paragraph
  • Mix long and short sentences
  • Start sentences differently
  • Reverse verb-noun relationship
  • Pace should change based on specific pages and
    tasks
  • Recruiting messages that build excitement
  • Privacy links that explain policy
  • Pace determines how slowly or quickly people read
  • Quick short words, short sentences
  • Slow pace is a crucial element in holding
    audience attention and creating momentum

75
Paragraph Structure
  • Start paragraphs with topic sentences
  • Gets to the point
  • Provides context and explains why information is
    important
  • Previews organization
  • Use topic sentences in combination with specific
    heads and subheads
  • Follow topic sentence with 1,2,3 structure based
    on cause and effect
  • Writing for the web is challenging for most
    people.
  • The web works differently than print
  • Web audiences are impatient
  • The Web is constantly changing

76
Parallel Structure for Lists
  • List multiple ideas with symmetry
  • Create a consistent look and feel
  • Separate information into manageable chunks
  • Provide cues for the reader

77
Avoid Overediting
  • Eliminates necessary info, kills emotion, drains
    life from copy
  • Removes ability of passage to connect with
    audience on deeper level
  • Creates Dead Fragments
  • Original MLK 1963
  • I have a dream that my four children will one day
    live in a nation where they will not be judged by
    the color of their skin but by the content of
    their character.
  • Overediting MLK 1963
  • Have sons judged by character and not color.

78
EXERCISE 7 EDIT AND POLISH YOUR PAGE.
79
VIII. DEVELOPING SEARCHABLE WEB COPY
80
What Web Writers Write
  • Marketing material
  • Instructional academic copy
  • Journalism
  • Factual information
  • Legal information
  • Additional assets
  • Images diagrams
  • Sound video
  • Captions

81
Page Titles, Footers, Contact Info, Forms,
Instructions
  • Help readers understand where they are and why
    they are there
  • Help readers know what to do next
  • Simple, clear, and obvious and compelling
  • Should work like good signage

82
Links
  • Provide shortcuts to relevant information
  • Make Web fundamentally different from other media
  • Work best when you provide only most pertinent
    links
  • Links should answer reader questions
  • Where am I going?
  • Where have I been?
  • What will this link do?
  • Whats in it for me?

83
Web Writers Write Metadata
  • Metadata is language linked to the search process
  • Works on keyword phrases and one word metatags
    embedded in HTML
  • Built on heads, subheads, running copy
  • Connects to the Web Community

84
To Write Metadata
  • Do keyword research with WordTracker
  • Use real text, not graphical text
  • Work into heads and subheads
  • Employ keyword phrases throughout entire page

85
What Is Web Accessibility?
  • Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
  • Section 508
  • Web Accessibility Initiative/WCAG

86
How Does it Impact Content Authors?
  • Most accessibility issues are design dependent,
    however there are a few things
  • a writer can do to make sure their copy is
    accessible to all users.
  • Text equivalents for non-text images for visually
    impaired
  • Captions for hearing-impaired
  • Maintaining clear and simple language appropriate
    for site content

87
Web Style Considerations
  • Consistency of word choice and terminology,
    spelling, and grammar
  • Use informal but not incorrect language
  • For international audiences simple sentences,
    controlled vocabulary, unambiguous meaning
  • Avoid sexist, discriminatory language

88
Establish Standards
  • Develop a web style guide
  • Standards accessibility issues
  • Content/copy guide
  • AP or Chicago Manual of Style for language
  • Web site vs. web site
  • Home page vs. homepage
  • Graphic design interface/identity guide

89
EXERCISE 8 IDENTIFY SEARCHABLE KEY WORDS AND
PHRASES.
90
In Closing, Remember These Copy Tips
  • Users read language first
  • Visualize the language you use
  • Write instructions as if they were for you
  • Search for and answer unspoken questions
  • Say it plain first, then gussy it up
  • Develop a flexible style
  • Talk to your Web designer and team

91
and Keep in Mind
  • Knowledge (content) is heart of a college or
    university
  • You publish more, read more, communicate more
    than anyone/anything
  • Academics are original information workers
  • You should be good at writing and publishing Web
    content

92
Resources
  • Content Critical Gaining Competitive Advantage
    Through High-Quality Web Content Gerry McGovern
    and Rob Norton
  • The Web Content Style Guide An Essential
    Reference for Online Writers, Editors and
    Managers Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton
  • www.useit.com (Jakob Nielsen)
  • Information Architecture for the World Wide Web
    Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville
  • Dont Make Me Think A Common Sense Approach to
    Web Usability Steve Krug
  • Designing Web Sites That Work Usability for the
    Web Tom Brinck, Darren Gergle, Scott D. Wood

93
Thank you!
  • Fritz McDonald
  • Creative Director
  • fritz.mcdonald_at_stamats.com
  • 800.553.8878 office
  • www.stamats.com
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com