Creating Effective Web Content

Use Your Professional Judgment

Be Concise

Research shows web readers prefer lean text. Imagine your reader as impatient, even stressed—someone looking for sources of succinct information. To write concisely:

Limit each paragraph to one idea.
Begin each paragraph with a topic sentence.
Use three or four sentences per paragraph.
Keep sentences short.
Use simple sentence structure.
Use plain language.
Be direct with your audience—use the personal pronoun “you.”
Avoid sentences in the passive voice.

1. Chunk your content.

Help your audiences find the information they seek more efficiently. Readers who scan don't like to scroll through long web pages. Chunk your information into meaningful sections. Then:

Size each chunk to fit on a single screen that carries a meaningful headline.
Reduce word count by 50 percent when you edit print documents for the web.
Chunk each page into a few paragraphs.

2. Present just the facts.

Edit out all nonessential information. Avoid words and phrases that sound like jargon. Avoid any jargon unless you’re targeting a specialized audience. Even then, ask, will newcomers to the field understand what I mean?

3. Use appropriate key words in your text.

for easy accessing by search engines and for readers who are scanning. Key words are also an element of the metadata that’s important to the success of your text.

4. Why rewrite something that's already on paper?

All the evidence points to the inevitable: People won't read your page when it's wordy, full of fluff or jargon, or not chunked into meaningful pieces. Remember, people will enter your site from many different points. You can't expect web users to read your content in a linear fashion.

Design for Easy Scanning

Do whatever you can to attract and keep your clients coming back to your website for more.

1. Make your fonts legible.

Familiar serif and sans serif fonts are, in most cases, the best choice for publishing chunks of text on the web. Verdana, Arial, and Helvetica are good sans serif choices. Georgia, Times New Roman, and Times are good serif choices.

For ease of reading, use a font size of 10 point and above. 12 and 14 point are even better. Even young readers don’t like tiny type. A size 3 character on the screen is roughly equal to 12-point type of the same font.
Use upper and lower case in headings and text. Readers recognize words by their shape. A word typed in all capitals looks like a rectangle, which slows your reader down.
Italics decrease legibility; use them sparingly.
Dark type on a light background reads and prints much better than light type on dark.
Remember that browser settings, whether altered by the user or not, determine what the user ultimately sees.

2. Use the Journalist's Tool: The Inverted Pyramid.

Web readers give you but a few seconds to persuade them you've got what they're looking for. The inverted pyramid is the perfect device to grab readers looking for factual content.

Start with your conclusion and build down to the background information. Better still, link to detailed and background information. Web readers will pursue what they want.

3. Keep Line Lengths Short.

Readers prefer to read web lines of 40 to 60 characters long—short lines are easier on the eye. Most readers scan for information and have trouble finding it in dense blocks of text.

4. Use Headlines and Subheads to Break Up Your Text.

A good headline or subhead is brief, simple, and meaningful. Web surfers can come to your site from many different directions, particularly when they’re using a search tool that looks for key words. Thus, each page on your site should carry a meaningful headline—one that can stand alone out of the context of the rest of your pages.

A word about “welcome”… Web users are gathering information and want quick access to that information. Don’t make the mistake of using “welcome” in your title or main heading or writing a welcoming introduction to your site. “Welcome” wastes a keyword and does nothing to help search engines find you; a welcoming intro is superfluous.

5. Use Bullets and Numbered Lists.

They're easier to read and scan. The format helps you more concisely shape your content. Numbered lists help your readers pinpoint the next step. When you bury the information in a paragraph, your readers get frustrated.

6. Highlight Key Words.

You'll help your readers scan more efficiently. Use a color—reserve blue for links—or simply use a boldface font. Remember, only 20 percent of web readers read every word.

7. Balance Your Page.

On your page, aligned rows, columns, subheadings, and graphic elements are easiest to read.

8. Provide Visual Navigation and Accessibility Aids.

Graphics and words work together, and the reader uses both to navigate. Experienced surfers expect a colored bar at the top or left of the page to offer links to key sections of the site. Although the center of the page will attract attention first, most readers instinctively look to the top and side for navigational cues.

Don’t put more than three carefully chosen words in button or text hyperlinks. If you can't succinctly describe an area you’re linking to, try reorganizing.
When space is tight, don’t resort to squeezing in acronyms and abbreviations. If your readers don't know what it is, they won't use it.
Don’t use icons alone; use them only as supplements to a word hyperlink.
Use hyperlinks within text blocks carefully. They may tempt your reader away from the text flow. Consider a section of links in a block by themselves where they may also be easier for your reader to find again later.
Group hyperlinks when you have a lot of them. Make these groups visually distinct.
Use alt tags with all buttons and graphics.
Don’t rely on colors for navigation.
Use graphics, but only when they’re integral to content. Keep graphics’ file sizes small to reduce downloads.

9. Give your web page a descriptive title.

The title, which appears above your browser tool bar, is used by search engines to find your page. Include key words in your title. Home pages for county Extension offices at Oregon State University have titles like this: “Oregon State University Extension Service, Columbia County,” which fits within the 65-character limit Google uses to display titles on its search pages.

10. Provide a printer-friendly option of all your documents.

Some users like to read and make notes on hard copies; others fear the information may not always be available online.

Convey Credibility

Web readers look for marks of credibility when scanning a web page. Here's how you can be credible:

Make it clear who’s publishing your website. Web readers are skeptical about content when they can't identify who’s sponsoring it.
Provide your credentials. You can link to this information.
Link to high-quality, credible sites that support your content. Readers sometimes like links to opposing points of view, as well. Many interpret this as author objectivity.

And Finally…

Use Your Professional Judgment

You know when your audience and subject matter may make it appropriate to break the rules. Apply a bit of the "less is better" principle. Ask for feedback from clients and co-workers, and you'll be on your way to having a web page or site that’s alluring, attractive, and easy to read.

Go to http://usability.gov/guidelines/ for information about page length, scrolling vs. linking and scrolling vs. paging, page density, information placement, formatting for efficient viewing, use of links, and more.

For in-depth information about website content and design, try http://www.webstyleguide.com/.

Source: Kathy Wright and Susan Bale, 2001, Kansas State University Research and Extension; adapted and updated, with permission, in 2006, with information from http://usability.gov/guidelines/ and Oregon State University Extension.

Alt tags

Alt tags or text is copy that appears to users who mouse-over a missing graphic image (or copy that’s “spoken” to sight-impaired users, with readers). Provide all your graphic images with alt tags that describe the image and tell the reader its purpose.

Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks (or links) are words or graphics that enable you to link to another place in your document or to a different document. Hyperlinks move you to the new place when you click on them. Set text hyperlinks apart from regular copy by using a different font color (usually blue) and underlining.

Other writing online resources

Web Style Guide, 2nd ed.

For more information, contact Denni Johnson

Last updated: 03/13/2009