Writing for Your Website

Writing for a website is different from writing for other media.  Content on a website should encourage interaction and be prepared for visitor interaction.  The simplest way to think of writing for a website is as if scripting for a two way dialogue. 

You interact with visitors by the information displayed and visitors interact with you by clicking on links.  When visitors click on links they are basically saying “tell me more about this” or “I want to do this”.

Writing for your website should always have this basic understanding of visitor interaction.  Other guidelines for writing website material are:

• Clarify target audience(s)-  Who are you writing to?  Be as specific as reasonable.  Multiple target audiences do not have to be targeted with the same content.  Content should be developed for each clearly defined audience or scenario.  The more relevant content is the more effective it will be at conveying your message.
• Clarify message(s)-  What are you trying to communicate?  Outlining can help organization, especially when content is complicated or lengthy.
• Determine location-  Where will the content be located on the site?  How will visitors get to it?  What links will be pointing to it?  Keep in mind search engines could make any page the first page a visitors sees.  Search engines can allow visitors to skip through site structure to exactly what they are looking to find.
• Depth of writing-  In general, information that is at higher levels should be more concise while content deeper within the site should be more complete.  Keep in mind the purpose of your content within the site.  The purpose could be to help visitors browse and location information most important to them.
• Related information-  What other information are visitors likely to want?  This can also help with up-selling and/or cross-selling.
• Evaluate effectiveness-  Track and determine the effectiveness of writings that are written to cause an action by the reader.