The words used on a website are crucial to its success

Why ‘words’ on the web are so important

A website is our most versatile marketing tool. It’s current, interactive and up-to-date. Content within a website feeds the ever-growing demand for fast and easy up-dates, news-bites and ‘sharing’ methods via social media channels and portable communication devices such as smart phones and netbooks.

The words used on a website have a few seconds to capture a user’s interest and hundreds of other ‘events and festivals’ web pages to compete with.

The challenge of selecting the right words and arranging them effectively within your website’s navigation and design are key to keeping your users active, engaged and interested enough to take the next step - book an event, attend your festival, bookmark your site as one of their favourites, listen to your podcast, etc.

Choosing the right words and phrases is also important for keeping your website and web pages ‘optimised’, i.e. making sure that when users search for your types of events and activities, your website will appear high up in the natural search engine rankings and will encourage links through to your site in an instant.

Ten easy steps to make sure your website ‘words’ work for you:

1. Who are you writing for?

Do you know who your audience is? Remember that you are writing for them, not yourself, so think about how they like to receive and read the information you are writing about. Do your events attract wide-ranging audiences from families with

young children through to students and senior citizens? Or are you writing for a more specialised market such as comedy lovers, arts fanatics or sporting fans?

What are you asking your readers to do? Is it to attend your events and make bookings, or are there pages that target other types of readers such as stakeholders or the press?

Keep your audience in mind at all times.

2. Don’t make me think!

You have just a few seconds to grab the attention of your readers so keep content to a minimum and keep it simple. Readers glance at pages and scan content in an ‘F’ shape looking for words or phrases that catch their eye.

Remember that reading from a screen is 25% slower than reading from a printed page and readers are busy, impatient and critical. If they don’t find the information they need quickly and easily they will soon lose interest.

3. Be concise and keep it simple

Writing for the web needs to be short, sharp and dynamic. Cut out excess wording, use simple sentence structures, don’t use jargon (these words exclude people) and avoid repetition. Practice reading what you are writing out loud; if you need to pause for breath then your sentences are too long.

Your aim is to keep readers interested and engaged, so stick tightly to what you want to say and say it clearly and concisely. Don’t get bogged down with complicated words and long sentences.

Keep marketing hype to a minimum and avoid exaggerated claims or overly boastful language; readers need to know that your content is credible.

EVENTfulWRITING FOR THE WEB AND SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

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4. Use a conversational and communicative style

Writing for the web involves two people, not just one. The web is interactive. It’s all about relationships. If you want someone to do something as a result of what you write – such as come to an event, download a special offer or book tickets - ask yourself ‘what would persuade me to do it?”

Use words that will create interest, trigger enthusiasm, and motivate people to action. And inject emotion into words and phrases that people can respond to, e.g. ‘indulge in food heaven’, ‘go wild with woodland walks’, ‘leap into action’.

5. Engage readers and structure content well

Use ‘high impact’ headers and sub-headers to catch readers’ attention and to draw them further into the content. For long sentences or lists use bullet points to break up the content into bite-size chunks and make it more scannable.

Using the ‘inverted pyramid’ style of writing:

! Start with the shortest and clearest statement about your topic (the conclusion)

! Then add the ‘crucial’ information

! Then the ‘supportive’ information

Web readers tend to skip to the next paragraph once they’ve found the information they’re looking for, so a clear structure and bold headings will help them to do this and keep them engaged.

Make the crucial information-carrying words stand out by highlighting them in bold, although avoid highlighting entire sentences or long phrases as a scanning eye can only pick up two or three words at a time.

And back-up content with high-impact and good quality imagery.

6. Be accurate, consistent and up-to-date

Readers are thrown by inconsistencies in terminology, spelling and presentation and are intolerant of mistakes and out-of-date material. Check and edit everything that goes on to your pages, and test links from every direction.

Consistency in tone of voice is important as well, so try to stick to one content administrator or web editor.

7. A website doesn’t work in straight lines

And it doesn’t really have a beginning or end. This is useful to remember when writing content as readers will always need to know where they are in the site, what you want them to do, and where to go next.

Being able to navigate around your site quickly and easily gets customers engaged in your web pages, and they are more likely to interact, go where you want them to go, and do what you want them to do - bookmark an event, download a programme, book tickets, sign-up to your newsletter, read our blog, etc.

8. Be legible and ‘accessible’

Make sure that text is as clear, easy to read and ‘accessible’ as possible. Read the ‘Web Accessibility’ Fact Sheet and discuss guidelines with your web designer.

Here are some basic guidelines from the RNIB:

! Font – a sans-serif typeface such as Helvetica, Arial and Verdana is preferable to a serif font such as Times that has little ‘feet’ or ‘serifs’ at the ends of letters

! Size – a minimum of 12 point size type should be used

! Case – use upper and lower case throughout content as whole words in capital letters are hard to read

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! Colour – never use blue text, this colour is reserved for links. Dark text on a light background is usually easiest to read, however some contrasting colours are difficult to read for partially sighted people who can also have difficulties with colour perception, e.g. avoid red and green together

! Content links - incorporate content links (instead of ‘click here’) that link from ‘anchor’ words, this tells readers where they are going if they click the link, e.g. ‘read more on our blog’,

! Italics - avoid using italics; they are much harder and slower to read

9. Writing for the web and social media

Social media channels are revolutionising the way users interact with websites. Websites are no longer solely ‘information-led’ marketing tools; they are ‘living, breathing’ online platforms that generate two-way conversations between organisations and customers.

Websites are being moulded and shaped by user-generated content that helps to ‘spread the word’ about products and services as well as provide useful customer feedback for shaping and evaluating future marketing activity.

Sophisticated portable devices mean that more and more people are looking at websites on a small display. This means fine-tuning web content and navigability even further so that customers can scan easily and pick out key information.

Read our Fact Sheet on Social Media for useful hints and tips on incorporating, and benefiting from, social media-led content within your own content pages.

10. Writing for the web and search engine optimisation

Websites are found through a process called search engine optimisation, or via web links from other websites or e-communications.

Most people use a search engine, i.e. Google, Yahoo, MSN, to help them find what they’re looking for. A website has to be well optimised. This means it uses lots of key words, terms and phrases throughout the site, in headers and in HTML (design) coding, so that, when users search using a particular word or phrase, e.g. what’s on in Durham, food events North East, festivals Northumberland, your website will rank high within Google’s left-hand natural search results (i.e the search results which don’t pay to appear). A high ranking is important as most users tend not to look beyond the first page of results.

However, focusing simply on keywords, is not enough. A well-optimised site in Google’s eyes, maintains the right balance of keyword use, links, and usability.

How to make sure that your web content is optimised:

! If possible, seek advice from a web expert within your organisation, or speak to your web designers if you have one, and chat through the essentials of optimisation.

! Write copy around keywords that you know your customers will search on to find your events, but don’t overload content with keywords – four main keywords on a page is a good. High ‘keyword density’ detracts from readability.

! Place your keywords in headlines and/or first sentences. Behind the scenes meta data backs-up these headlines and strap-lines and this is what the Google spiders pick up in their searches.

! Placing important keyword phrases in bold can also influence its perceived importance by search engines. Dividing the page into sections with important keyword phrases in sub-headings is one effective way of doing this.

! Internal links – search engine spiders are able to index content on a page as well as hypertext links. Therefore, if you create a hypertext link on

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a keyword phrase from one page to another area of your site, the Google spiders are more likely to pick it up.

! External links – encouraging links back to your site is another good way of encouraging successful optimisation. Work with partner organisations and other arts, events and festival related organisations to build up linking possibilities:

♣! by way of content hypertext links within

pages that list partnership organisation websites.

♣! by asking partner sites to add your ‘logo’

as a hyperlink that links back to your site

! If your site has a blog (or you are planning to introduce one) include key words and phrases into blog content, it’s another way of making sure that content (and your web pages) are ‘picked up’ by the Google spiders.

! If your content management system (DMS) includes a ‘check box’ for keywords, insert these as often as possible for each event you upload; your events pages are more likely to appear in Google searches.

FURTHER INFORMATION:

There are many useful books and guides on ‘writing for the web’. Here are a few:

! A Simple Guide to Writing for your Website by Susannah Ross (Prentice Hall/Pearson Education Ltd) – available on Amazon

! Chambers Desktop Guides – writing for the web – www.chambers.co.uk - available on Amazon

! The Web Content Style Guide by Gerry McGovern, Rob Norton & Catherine O’Dowd (Prentice Hall/Pearson Education Ltd) – available on Amazon

! Clear Print Guide from the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB). Their See It Right pack and CD-Rom gives practical advice on producing accessible information. www.rnib.org.uk

! www.searchengineoptimisation.org

! Search Engine Optimisation for Dummies – available on Amazon

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