You are here: Home / Archives for Writing Skills / Website copy

Don’t put obstacles between your reader and your message!

September 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

When people arrive on your website they are looking for something.  If you want to keep them on your site you need to deliver what they want – fast.

These are the things that you need to avoid:

  • A splash (entry) page that shows off how clever your designer is, but annoys the visitor as they have to find a way past it to find out if you’ve got what they want.
  • A weak (or absent) headline.  I know I’m welcome on your website or you wouldn’t have one so use that headline to engage your reader, not to say nice, but ineffective things.
  • Too many things going on.  The patchwork quilt effect won’t keep your visitor long, if there are too many options they don’t know where to start and some of them will simply hit the ‘back’ button.  You need one dominant point of focus.
  • Whizzy images moving about or changing.  Images are important, but they don’t deliver your message on their own.  If every time your visitor tries to read something their eye is distracted by another changing picture, they’ll get irritated and leave.  Get your web people to slow image changes down to a very gentle ‘dissolve’.
  • Forms to fill in, search boxes, log ins that are NOT where it’s easy for your reader to take action.  The best place is on the right, just under your brand banner; more people complete forms here than in any other position on the site.
  • More than one menu – don’t confuse people.  You should have one menu right where people expect it to be, which is either vertically on the left or horizontally under the brand banner.  If your menu is above this some people will not see it and it vanishes as soon as the user scrolls down the page.
  • Content (copy) that is about you and what you do.  It should be about the reader and what they want and be full of benefits, not simply nice-to-have information.  Copy on your home page should not be about your background and experience; let the reader find out that you’ve got what they want first, they’ll go and look at your about page when they are sure you’re worth checking out.

If you have a commercial website (i.e. one that aims to get people ready to buy from you) why would you make it hard for them to do so?

—————————————-

Sign up to get your free reports, tips and information that will help you get your message across in writing.
Visit the Treasure Chest for more free information too.

You can also find us on +44 (0) 1245 473296 or on Skype 'lesleywriter'
Filed Under: Readability, Website copy Tagged With: , , ,

Getting fonts to work for you

August 22, 2011 By 2 Comments

I was just watching a funny video about PowerPoint by Don McMillan and his comments about fonts reminded me of how much impact the font you choose has on your message.

I used to create newsletters for Ford (the motor company) and the research and development site chose Helvetica Neue as their font.  This is a nice clean, easy to read font, modern and yet not gimmicky.  The older site where they had lots of old-fashioned equipment and 1950′s style offices chose Times for their newsletter, creating a conservative, more reserved look and feel to the newsletter.  We actually showed them the front page in several different fonts so they could see what it would look like and that was how they saw themselves.

People think fonts are simply decorative, but they reflect the personality of the company they represent.  Sometimes an attempt to be ‘different’ and not use the boring old fonts everyone else uses results in a disaster.

I’ve seen web pages created using ‘Forte’ (a bold script) in an effort to look like handwriting.  Worse still, it was in white writing on a dark beige background – all that happened was it made it really tough to read.

I found a web page that was in a font that I couldn’t read at all as all the letters were placed unevenly.  I love unusual fonts, but they aren’t intended for body copy.  The occasional headline or title, yes, but not anywhere you want people to actually get your message without having to work hard.

There’s fonts that are all capitals (like Copperplate Gothic) and look nice and clear, until you consider that the letters are all the same height.  Words in sentence case have a shape and most people read the shape of the word,  words all in capitals are little blocks with no real shape, so most readers will have to slow their reading rate in order to understand.

The web is more sophisticated than it used to be, but there are still websites where a fancy font defaults to Courier (which looks like an old fashioned typewriter font).  On the web fonts that have a serif (that little line at the top and bottom of the letter) are less clear on the screen as the extra lines test the screen resolution and, consequently, tend to look slightly fuzzy.

The moral of this tale is stick to a sans serif font like Arial, Tahoma, Trebuchet or Verdana and keep your message sharp and crystal clear!

———————————————–

Sign up on the right and get your free reports, tips and information that will help you get your message across in writing.

You can also find us on +44 (0) 1245 473296 or on Skype ‘lesleywriter’

Filed Under: Readability, Website copy Tagged With: ,

Language, language!

April 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Knowing what your message is, who your readers are and what they want is a great start, but then you need to write in their language.  Before you start rushing off to find out how much it will cost to translate your site into Greek, Dutch and Swahili, stop!  That’s not what I’m talking about.  I mean that you need to ensure that people can understand what you’re saying – their way, not your way.

This may seem obvious, but so many websites don’t get it right, so I think it’s worth banging on about it a bit!

The key things to remember are:

  • Don’t use industry jargon – even if you’re writing for that industry.  You never know who has been asked to do the research, they may not understand all the terms you use without thinking.
  • Ensure shortened forms and acronyms are explained.  Even if you’re referring to an industry association or institute, spell it out the first time on each page with the shortened version in brackets, then use the short form thereafter.
  • Don’t ramble!  Everyone can write, but some people take a lot more words to say what they mean than others.  Keep it short and simple.
  • Don’t use obscure words, just because you happen to know what they mean.  Optimum reading level for a website is about Grade 8 – that’s a 12- 13 year old!  If you have to use three simple words instead of one complex one, then do.
  • Check your spelling, grammar and punctuation – your reader will make judgements about your attention to detail based on any errors they spot.
  • Don’t fall into the traps of using similar words incorrectly.  In other words know the difference between:

    • Your and you’re

    There, their and they’re

    Affect and effect

    Loose and lose

    Principle and principal

    Discreet and discrete

    Complimentary and complementary.

    Read tomorrow’s blog to find out, if you don’t know already!

    The moral of this blog – write for your reader, in their language and at a level they can easily understand.

    —————————————————–

    Sign up on the right and get your free reports, tips and information that will help you get your message across in writing.

    You can also find us on +44 (0) 1245 473296 or on Skype ‘lesleywriter’

    Filed Under: Website copy Tagged With: , ,
    « Previous Page
    Next Page »