A Professional Web Design Service

Writing for the Web

The web requires a specific writing style:

• Simple and easy to skim
• Low on fluff
• Crafted with customer service in mind
• Uses bullet points to break out important elements
• Uses links to make the text more usable
• Incorporates calls to action

Combine those with some creativity and you have a valuable resource for your website visitors.

Writing for the web is tricky for newcomers and usually requires a lot of editing. Articles are reviewed to remove or reduce industry-specific terminology, break out content into separate pages when necessary, and stick to usability principles to keep web surfers happy.

Why you should forget about blogging

We do not usually suggest blogging unless it is common to your industry. In our experience, most corporate blogs fail at satisfying business purposes.

Instead, writing for the web should be done with a specific outcome in mind that matches your organizational goals.

Most websites are well-served by some combination of the following:

• A monthly meeting to determine what you will write during the next month, when you’ll write it, why you’ll write it, and to which audience
• Revising past articles to bring them up to date, add links to newer articles, etc.
• Discovering which content is popular, and finding ways to help that content bring in referrals.
• Developing new, free content and resources that will make visitors want to look around for more.

If you do only one of these, do the last one. We don’t believe it’s necessary to give everything away for free, but again and again we see free resources giving huge advantages to businesses on (and off) the web.