Developing Content for the World Wide Web

I. Before You Begin

In an effort to help you prepare your Web site and its content, we have prepared the following guidelines. As you progress in the development of your site, use these guidelines as a checklist to help you produce the best possible site. Check yourself.

What is the purpose of your site?
Consider the following questions; then formulate a mission statement for your site. As you develop material for your site, check to make sure that the material you have included facilitates your site's purpose. In addition, use the questions below to help define the material and how it is presented on a page-by-page basis.

What do you want to achieve?

What is your message?

What are you looking to provide?

Who is your audience?
(Age, Education, Language, Knowledge of the Internet)

Organize your site for the user, not according to your internal format.
Remember users may be unfamiliar with your jargon and organizational structure.

Set styles for the pages for a uniform and consistent site which will become familiar to users and easy to use.

Develop specifically for the Web.
Do not recycle old material from a different medium.

II. How to Write for the WWW

When writing for the Web, you are writing for a different media than print. Just as you would not film a play and call it a movie, do not put material prepared for printed publications on-line as they are.

As is the case with any means of communication, the WWW has unique advantages. It also has unique limitations. When preparing your material for this medium, consider the following:

People do not read on-line; they scan the page.

Reading on-line is about 25% slower than reading on paper and straining on the eyes.

Web users seldom catch more than one idea per paragraph.

People do not like to scroll.

With the above factors in mind, follow the guidelines below when developing material to be placed on your Web site:

Structure
The suggested model for organizing material on a Web site is the inverted pyramid.

As in a newspaper, the title is informative, sometimes followed by a subtitle. The conclusion is stated first, then supported and put in context with background material.

This structure should be implemented on all levels of the Web site:
- Within each paragraph
- Within each page
- Within each subsection.
Style
- There is no substitute for writing well.
- Good copy increases your site's credibility .
- Avoid self-promotion, exaggeration and hyperbole ("Coolest", "Hottest").
Be Succinct
- Write no more than 50% of what you would write for printed material.
- Convey one idea per paragraph.
Write Scannable Text
- Structure Articles with Understandable Titles and Subtitles
- Use Bulleted Lists
- Use Bold Text to Emphasize Important Words
- Use Hypertext Links

Empower Your Reader

Take advantage of the medium with links and interactivity to involve the reader and to stay within the above guidelines.

The Web is a user-activated medium which causes readers to feel that they should keep moving.

Break up the material into concise information. Use links to develop the inverted pyramid structure while also allowing readers to choose what material they would like to access.

Do not use links to "flip the pages of a book." Rather, split the information into coherent sections and institute links allowing the reader to continue to the sections in which they are interested. In this way, your site can convey more relevant material than other mediums and empower the reader to create his/her own flow of information without feeling like s/he has spent too much time on one page.

We are available to help you organize your site and prepare your content. Please do not hesitate to with any questions you may have or to schedule a complimentary consultation.