Copyright © 2006 Quest Software

Best Practices for Web Content

Eric Myers, Director, Internet MarketingEd Mauss, Manager, Marketing CommunicationsChris Peters, Search Marketing Manager

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Good Web Writing

• A factor in customer satisfaction• Essential to search engine optimization• Helps visitors make better, faster decisions• Three aspects:

–Orientation: how information is organized on a page–Information: how clear, concise and correct the content is

–Action: how the content helps visitors navigate

>You'll succeed by putting yourself in the shoes of your site's visitors – our customers and prospects.

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Remember:

• Writing for the web and writing for print are quite different: – 79% of users scan the page instead of reading

word-for-word – Reading from computer screens is 25% slower

than from paper • So: a web page should have scannable text and use

best practices proven to increase usability for customer

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The F-Shaped Pattern

•Left to right: an "about us" page; a product page; a search results page•Heat maps from user eye-tracking studies of three web sites:red= areas most viewed; yellow=fewer views; blue=least viewed; gray=no views.

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Best Practices: Pages

• Overview pages: Brief summary of challenges and our solution, then topic statements linking to more background, if needed

• Title and/or subhead repeated on each page: for context, so page can stand alone

• Active, concise language: use the second-person (‘you’) and as few words as possible; avoid jargon

• Images that add value and don’t interrupt message (consider thumbnails linked to full size and aligned right)  

• Consistent organization

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Best Practices: Paragraphs

• Precise, unique titles • Meaningful subheads (not clever or cute ones)

every one to two paragraphs • Brief paragraphs (‘chunks’ of information), with

just one idea expressed in each• Text hierarchy no deeper than four levels (title,

subhead, body copy/bullets, teaser links)

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Best Practices:Text

• Avoid all caps, italicized sentences and underlines except for links

• Use bold or color to emphasize key words• Keep lists to no more than 10 items • Use link text to describe what’s next; avoid

‘Click here’• No unnecessary words (e.g., “existing” and

“underlying”) and redundant sentences • Simple words: “diverse” not “heterogeneous”

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Telling a Story

Consider this as lead paragraph on Stat page:

“Towson University, of Baltimore, Md., was seeking a comprehensive change management solution for its PeopleSoft environment and chose Quest's Stat® for PeopleSoft. The result? It has increased its development team’s productivity by 65 percent as well as dramatically improved the IT team's response time to change requests.”

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Huh?????

• “[Our] service-oriented management solutions provide a modular and future-proof approach to managing highly diverse and widely distributed IT infrastructures”

• “[The product] integrates service impact management with event processing automation to build a service model that maps IT components to the business services they support, consolidating, enriching, and correlating events, as well as determining root causes and the impact of events on business services.”

• “[The product] provides a proven suite that adapts to processes to align identities and access requirements, offering capabilities that include user administration & provisioning, password management, Web access management, directory management & visualization, federation, audit and compliance”

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Quest.com Content

• Samples of Good Pages– http://www.quest.com/jprobe/

– http://www.quest.com/foglight-release-manager/

– http://www.quest.com/application-and-services-management/

– http://www.quest.com/intelligent-messaging/

• Real-Time Critiques– Volunteers?

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Advice from Pros• Eric Myers: “Always write content that is going to be

helpful to customers. Does it answer the obvious questions they will want to ask?”

• Andrew Kordek: “Be strategic, relevant and credible.”• Ernest Hemingway: “Remember – prose is

architecture, not interior design.”• Isaac Asimov: "Try to write reasonably well".

– Don't agonize over every little word when you're drafting content – Get your thoughts down, starting with an outline. – Fill in the outline– Fine-tune to check the flow of information and cut extra words– When you've finished that, then do it again

• Remember, everyone needs an editor, no matter the skill level or experience.– Marcom queue for new/revised pages – Ongoing review of current pages

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Additional Resources

• Jacob Nielsen, Web Guru: www.useit.com • “Don’t Make Me Think”: www.sensible.com • “Elements of Style” (Strunk & White): Any bookstore or

Amazon.com• Great article about writing for the customer:

www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=843281 • Customer Focus Message Calculator – The “We We”

Monitor : http://www.futurenowinc.com/wewe.htm • Key word popularity measurement:

www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion • Key word competitiveness measurement:

www.nichebot.com

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Questions and Comments?

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Appendix: Before and After

BeforeSince the database is at the core of today’s mission-critical applications, it is essential to an organization’s success that it is available and performing as well as possible. DB2 LUW is at the heart of many mission critical applications and with that comes high level of expectation that the database remain available and performing well under many types of conditions. To prevent database downtime requires that data be collected about the database and the associated tiers.

AfterDB2 LUW drives many mission-critical applications, so it must be available 24X7 and perform well under all conditions. To ensure this, you need the tools to easily collect, view and act on detailed data about the database and the associated application tiers.

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Appendix: Before and AfterBeforeSQL Server DBAs are often faced with making changes to their SQL Server database environment.  These changes can be driven by a number of different factors: changes to the application the database is supporting; configuration changes to improve database performance; business-related changes due to data retention requirements, data security issues; or other internal and external initiatives.  What makes managing change even more daunting is that changes in one area of the database could affect changes in another area.

AfterSQL Server DBAs must often make changes to their SQL Server database environments. These changes can be driven by: • Enhancements to the application the database is supporting • Configuration adjustments to improve database performance• Business-related mandates for data retention • Data security issues

Managing change can be daunting because changes in one area of the database could affect changes elsewhere.