In order to be successful in creating a good website the content that appears on it should be valuable and useful to the people who use it. This is something that is often overlooked by most organizations and causes people to fail at a task that they are trying to complete. By understanding how and why people use websites will help you write content.

Keep It Short

People do not read content on websites they scan it. Give people only what they need. They are only interested in a small amount of what appears on a web page.

Break Up Content with Headings

This will make it easier for people to quickly locate the information they need. Good headings help both readers and writers.

Write for Your Audience

Focus on the people who are using your website and the content that they need to be successful. For more information about the audience for the College Libraries website please take a look at the Guidelines web page. Have the user persona’s around while writing.

Don’t Make Up Names

If you make up a name people will not know what it means. Do you know what flippyflop means? I just made up the word and thought it would be great word to use instead of frogs.

Start with the Most Important Thing First

When people read the content on a web page they are more likely to read the entire first paragraph than the last one. Think of writing like a funnel where the top part is read by everyone and only a few words are read at the bottom if at all.

Resources

Nielsen, J. (2006, April 17). F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content. Retrieved from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

Nelsen, J. (2008, May 6). How Little Do Users Read? Retrieved from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/percent-text-read.html

Redish, J. (2007). Letting go of the words: Writing Web content that works. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

Usability.gov. (n.d.). Writing for the Web. Retrieved from http://www.usability.gov/methods/design_site/writing4web.html