Winning Words for Web SitesA lot of attention is paid to designing websites. The graphics,
branding, and java scripts – all go to give a site a professional and polished appearance. Then you begin to read text. The first typo you ignore. The second is annoying, then a sentence is so poorly constructed you can’t make out what it means. No matter how pretty site, looks, if it doesn’t read well you’ll lose business.
Writing copy, like designing graphics, is a skill in its own right. You wouldn’t ask a chef to fix your car, or a mechanic to cook your meal, so why expect graphics, computer or business experts to write your text?
Good text is concise and easy to understand. Here are some principles to show you how to evaluate a well-written site:
KEEP IT SHORT – Most words are used to join other words together, therefore fewer of them you use to communicate your message, more likely it is to be read. After all computer screen is 75% less efficient as a reading medium than paper. A copywriter will often write more words than is needed in first draft, The second or third drafts are produced rearranging phrases to weed out unnecessary words.
KEEP IT SIMPLE – Some people think that using big words and lots of jargon demonstrate intelligence. Usually it demonstrates a total lack of empathy with reader. You need to be sensitive to how people take in information. The more three-syllable words you use, more complex writing will be, even if words are in normal everyday use.
KEEP IT FLOWING – When people write long, rambling sentences, with multiple clauses, and especially when they pepper writing with complex words and irrelevant side issues, sentences become so complicated, even to most sophisticated of readers or minds and sometimes to writers themselves, that is almost impossible to ascertain meaning – just like this sentence in fact! Sentences of between 11 and 20 words on average work well. But length needs to be varies, so that writing flows.
