• Writing Copy for the Web

  Filed under Uncategorized
  Apr 14

  When you write copy for the web, less really is more. People don’t read web sites,
  they scan.

  A few simple rules:

  1. Omit Needless words.

  E.B. White’s rule is even more important for the web. Take your website and remove half the words on the page. Then remove half of those. (Hey, they’re not gonna be read anyway…)

  2. Remove marketing fluff. People don’t need to be welcomed to a web site or be assured their experience on the site will be a good one.

  3. Be direct. If you sell software, call it software and describe exactly what it does. Fluff like “The enterprise management solution leading in value, implementation and functionality” tells the reader nothing. (BTW, I pulled that from a real site.)

  4. Use bulletted phrases not sentences when describing a product:

  Blue Widget
  -round
  -fluffy
  -blue
  -fits in a purse or pocket

  5. Don’t make people scroll. Put it in one screen above the fold and use lots of white space around it. If you remove half of the text on the page, this should be easy.

  6. Highlight important text.

  7. Text hierarchy is important. Don’t put smaller text above larger text. People have become accustommed to to more important things being in larger text at the top. (Titles of articles, for example.)
  

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