Web Writing & Web Design

How to Effectively Write for the Web

Effective Writing for the Web

It only takes 30 seconds for a user to make a decision as to whether or not they will move onto the next relevant website. To avoid loosing viewers, it is imperative that your website wording is short, explicit, ,includes bulletins, headers and uses verbiage that a vast majority of viewers will understand,

Web writing involves taking large content, reducing and summarizing the content into smaller succinct paragraphs highlighting the important information the viewer needs to know.

Tips to Effect Web Writing Keep it Short

Make your copy short on each page. Doing this will engage your audience to continue through your site. To much verbiage looses attention and interest. You want your audience to move through your site and contact you or make a purchase.

Headings Using effective headings makes your copy scanned friendly and helps breakup

simple text. Headings organize your thoughts into a logical outline, which improves the quality of your writing.

Bullets and list Helps break up the text and allows for easy scan by search engines. Avoid using

BIG words. It’s important that your users don’t have to interpret your copy. Your writing needs to be clear, concise and easy to understand. Bullets and list provide that.

Contact Information Don’t make your users search for you. Incorporate your contact information on

every page.

How to Make an Active Website and Relate to Users

Making an Active Website

Your website is going to begin with a domain name for example; abestfriend.ca.  If you don't already have one, make one that is simple, short and obvious to your industry.  Once the domain name has been approved, you will need a web host provider.  You can Google hosting providers, for example; http://www.hosting-review.com/canada.shtml?gclid=cj2llrCzqboCF1amgod6wwACA and find the best one that will work for you.

Relate to Users The goal is to capture traffic to your website and it’s services.

This is where direct marketing is heavily used to grab the attention of the visitors. A valuable piece of content or a paid search ad or recommendations from social media channels, are just a few ways in which you can obtain qualified traffic.

A landing page is a specific area of your website where traffic is sent (via links from online advertisements, organic search results, social media or email) specifically to prompt a certain action or result.  And since a visitor usually lands on a page after clicking on a link, it’s important that the links you use to send traffic to your website is relevant to what that person is looking for. Once on your landing page, it’s basically a tactic of one-on-one selling so if it’s not what people are looking for, you are likely to get a low conversation.

Best Practice to Redevelop a Website

A truly effective web site reflects not only the image

of the business, but also its objectives

Update your Website

Study your site, find out what is working and needs to be improved.  Are you using Keywords?  Do you have media social links and if so are they useful to your consumers?  Does your website have a flow to make it user friendly. 

A Best Friends Cleaning Service Website

Here is a good example; http://www.abestfriend.ca/ website was created 13 years ago and as such has never been updated.  When you first look at it, you can see the writing which is detailed, resulting in a loss of interest. Additionally the writing is an image and because it is an image and not text it cannot be scanned by search engines, which eliminates A Best Friend website from popping up on a organic Google search.  

Make the Site More User Friendly

www.abestfriend.ca STEP ONE Our first step was to view the current

website to see what worked and what didn’t work. Without hesitation the website was too busy. At that point I decided to change the layout of the site to make it cleaner, tighter and modern.  Additionally it was decided by the business owner and myself to create a layout that match the style of the business cards and company vehicles. After the web page layout design was complete, I created a landing page that was easy to navigate. I did this by making key links at the top of the web page and included a short and simple content in the body. I added additional links which were "quotes" and “testimonials".  Both features add value to a website allowing consumers to efficiently and effectively connect with the business resulting in a sale.

www.abestfriend.ca

STEP TWO The verbiage was extremely

detailed and repetitive.  It was imperative that who a Best Friend was and what services they provided was not lost in the summarization of text. Our goal was to shorten the text eliminate redundancy and keep the viewers interest to continue through the site. At the same time I ensured that key words were used to allow the site for easing scanning by search engines.

www.abestfriend.cawww.abestfriend.ca

Step Three I created a simplified and

streamlined look with a black/white theme that supported the companies new business cards and vehicle signage. It is aesthetically pleasing modern, crisp, clean and tight. The redesign represents the corporate brand and presents themselves as professionals which is exactly the image the company is wanting to portray.

Good vs. Bad Design

BAD

To the right is a screenshot for WeighMax. This website was on a list of bad designs. You can see the site is not cohesive. The text is very hard to read. There is not enough contrast between the text and the background. The graphics feels like clipart with the colour overlays.

GOOD

The website was redesigned. It is much easier to navigate, giving you 3 points of reference to choose. The layout keeps important features above the fold and the colour is not overpowering. Their redesign definitely represents the corporate brand and presents themselves as professionals.

Incorporating Social Media

Twitter, Facebook, Deal Sites

Consumers are searching for details through social media. Following companies through social media allows you to create full exposure to update on services, changes in consumer product and seasonal specials.

Incorporate your social media links to your site.

Look into deal sites such as Groupon – these can work very well for business if the right balance is found. They bring in new business and create repeated customers.