Design Guidelines: Content
When writing content for the web it is essential to speak the language of your users. Become a word detective, use google trends. Words are the basic elements of links, get them precisely right to provide strong information scent. Identify trends, don't invent them. Look at the evolution of language.
Get to the essence of the message! Stop 'waving' on your webpage ('Welcome to the webpage of our company. We are proud to blah-blah...').
Always remember that the user is in charge, the user is impatient, nasty, demanding, in a hurry and in control to spend its time somewhere else (according to Jakob Nielsen: 'Users spend most of their time on other sites'). Online marketing is about giving attention (versus offline marketing is about getting attention).
Design Guidelines for Content
- Make information easy to find with clear headings and meaningful sub-headings (not ‘clever’ ones).
- Break up the information into manageable pieces.
- Put the pieces in a logical order for your readers.
- Keep your sentences short and employ one idea per paragraph.
- Use the ‘inverted pyramid’ style: conclusion (context) first, results later.
- Talk to your readers. Use "you".
- Write in the active voice (most of the time).
- Put the action in the verb, not in the nouns.
- Use your readers' words.
- Use half the word count (or less) than conventional writing.
- Use bulleted lists where appropriate – for a list of items and for parallel "if, then" sentences.
- Employ scannable text like highlighted keywords.
Best Practices
See my blog entry for Best Practices for accessible Content
References:
- Nielsen, J. (1997, 10 01). How Users Read on the Web. Alertbox: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html
- Quesenbery, W. (2008, 05). Usability doesn’t stop when you write the content. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Usability_doesnt_stop_when_you_write_the_content.html
Similar Posts:
- Design Guidelines: Links
- User-Centered Design (UCD) Methods: Comparison and Overview
- Implications of the Inability of Users to Search Effectively
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About Michael Gaigg
Michael Gaigg is a User Interface Expert at Esri. He is the team lead of the UI Engineering group in Professional Services and has been designing map applications for over 8 years.About Me
I'm Michael Gaigg, Lead UI Engineer at Esri's Prof. Services.
I have over 8 years of experience in designing map interfaces and can't stop thinking about improving them.
Help me by sharing your thoughts, ideas and comments.
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October 20th, 2008 - 05:30
Very interesting!! years ago I started a website (blog) with the phrase: 'Welcome to my blog…', now I know I should avoid using those words
…Thanks!!
November 9th, 2008 - 07:48
Hi jessicab!
I don't think it's wrong per se to start a personal blog with a greeting to your friends. My point was that it is kind of redundant for whoever comes to your site because they either came consciently and therefore know it already or task-driven (through a search engine for example) and then they care more about finding the desired information.
But again, for personal pages/blogs it is ok because it will add a personal touch that your friends might enjoy and you don't need to 'optimize' the user experience in terms of task success. Happy blogging!
November 15th, 2008 - 11:12
For the new design of my website I considered what would be the best content on the start site for the users. I decided to put the news on the top left and some thumbnails of top rated gallery pictures in the center. The "Net Gen" generation loves them
. This is mainly interested for regular users. What are the latest news? Are there new pictures? But what about the first time users? So I added some text on the top left right above the news for users which are not logged in: What's this site all about? What will you find here? What can you do? And the best: This is not only an interesting information for new users – Google likes it too 
November 16th, 2008 - 07:32
noox, you didn't post the url to your new site – i'd be interested to see, is it online already?
I think you made good decisions. Current and changing content is very attractive to returning customers and it shows that the site provides up-to-date content.
Out of my experience what works the best is to have a precise tagline that describes in easy to understand and short words what your site is about. No need for complicated descriptions, your logo, title and the tagline should give users a good sense of what's going on. More important, in many cases your first time users even know already what your site is about because they came to your homepage through a referral link or they don't even hit your homepage anymore because they enter your site in a deep-link referred by a search engine result.