Writing web content the right way

When you sit down to write content for your website, who exactly are you writing the content for?

It’s very easy to fall into the trap of writing your web content to please yourself as a business owner – or if you work for a larger company, to please your boss, or the person who’s going to sign off on the finished article.

STOP!

If you want your website to deliver results, your web content should be written to appeal directly to just one group of people: your site visitors.

Know your web audience

When you built your website your web designer / web development team will have spent time researching the online audience your site is designed to appeal to (or at least they should have). That information is just as crucial… if not more so… when it comes to writing effective content for your website.

Take a bit of time to re-acquaint yourself with your online audience. Work out who you want to reach out to online, and tailor your content accordingly.

Here are a few tips to help you write more effective web content:

• Grab attention: web users are impatient – forget flowery introductions and verbose descriptions, make your writing clear, concise and to the point from the start.
• Make it scannable: avoid large blocks of uninterrupted text. Use headings, sub-headings and bullet points to break up the text into manageable, scannable stand-alone chunks.
• Make it original: unique, original content is a great way to engage your users, establish your relevance and authority, and search engines love it.
• Use the inverted pyramid: the inverted pyramid writing style, often used for newspaper stories, tends to work well on the web. Aim to deliver the most important points of your story/information first, going on to deliver supporting details in order of decreasing importance down the page. Ideally, the user should be able to stop reading at any point and still get the gist of your content.
• Be consistent: use a simple, easy to read writing style, and keep things consistent across the site. If you have a number of people creating your content, consider developing a style-guide or house-style to help maintain consistency.
• Engage with your reader: use a conversational style, and write as if you were talking to an individual rather than a large audience. It will help your writing to engage with the reader on a much more personal level.