10 Web Writing Hints

April 5, 2011

Clients who choose to write their own website text often ask us for pointers when preparing their text for the web.  If you’re one of those with questions we’ve made a top 10 list to scoot you along in the right direction!

1. Be sure to consider your audience when writing your text.  Write to their reading and comprehension level of your subject.
2. Break out important information into paragraphs and bulleted lists whenever possible. This creates more white space so it doesn’t look like too much content.  Id’ say no more than 3 sentences, give or take in a paragraph.
3. Place meaningful headers at the top of any paragraphs more than than 3 sentences long so they can skim the headers and decide if the information in the paragraph interests them.
4. Most important information first! Write inverted pyramid style.
5. Remove any unnecessary fluff, generally audiences don’t care about anything cute or salesy.
6. Get down to business but be friendly about it. 🙂
7. If you’re asking them to do something do it first.
8. If you’re referring to an image or chart put the information pertaining to that graphic with the graphic.  People want to understand the graph but won’t read large blocks of text nor will they look for an explanation in copy a paragraph or two above the images.
9. Make a list of keywords before you start and refer back to them when writing or after.  Go back after you’re done and replace a few “it’s and that’s” with the proper names/phrases you’re referring to.
10. Use key word phrases together.

If you’re interested in learning more about writing for the web contact us about attending our workshop taking a more in depth look at the topic.