Derek Powazek’s article “Calling All Designers: Learn to Write!” rightly argues that designer can create better online user experience by writing well.
He states that “…when it comes to experience on the web, there’s no better way to create it than to write, and write well.”
In most websites, content is the centre of universe. Majority of which are made up of humble text. Yet most of them are given second thought.
Handing over paragraphs of texts in word document to the web designer does not mean the job is complete.
The content has to be broken down into usable information that
Janice (Ginny) Redish “Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works” suggest these:
• Break up large documents.
• Think “topics,” not “book.”
• Divide web content by
– time or sequence
– task
– people
– type of information
– questions people ask
• Decide how much to put on one web page by considering
– how much people want in one visit
– how connected the information is
– how long the web page is
– the download time
– whether people will want to print
– how much they will want to print
Most visitors to your website want information, and they want it fast. Do not drive people away from web sites with boring, internal focus wall of text.
Make sure your content motivate people to take action.
Content first before talk about interactivity or your choice of technologies implementation.
Copywriting is interface design. Beside colour, shape, graphic and photo, copywiting can make or break the content.
While this article talks from a blogger prespective, it is applicable to writing for the web.
Sometime we can add value by advising customer how best to present thier web content on writing
