Want to discover the fastest way to jumpstart your
sales? |
|
Whatever business you
are in get sales leads from the Internet within days!
Get a competitive advantage, sit back and let us bring customers to you! |
|
|
|
How to write for the Web is an interesting
article in our series of Internet
Marketing Case Studies which we would
like to share with you. Not really a Case Study
but important when considering what you want
to say on your website. Many people think that a
website should be written the same way that they
would write a corporate brochure using "marketese":
|
How Users
Read on the Web
They don't.
People rarely read Web pages word by word;
instead, they
scan the page, picking out
individual words and sentences. In a
recent study John Morkes and I found that 79
percent of our test users always scanned any new
page they came across; only 16 percent read
word-by-word.
As a result, Web pages have to employ
scannable text, using
- highlighted keywords
(hypertext links serve as one form of
highlighting; typeface variations and color
are others)
- meaningful sub-headings
(not "clever" ones)
- bulleted lists
- one idea per paragraph
(users will skip over any additional ideas
if they are not caught by the first few
words in the paragraph)
- the
inverted pyramid style, starting with
the conclusion
- half the word count (or
less) than conventional writing
We found that credibility is
important for Web users, since it is
unclear who is behind information on the Web and
whether a page can be trusted.
Credibility can be increased by high-quality
graphics, good writing, and use of
outbound hypertext links. Links to
other sites show that the authors have done
their homework and are not afraid to let readers
visit other sites.
Users detested "marketese";
the promotional writing style with boastful
subjective claims ("hottest ever") that
currently is prevalent on the Web. Web users are
busy: they want to get the straight facts. Also,
credibility suffers when users clearly see that
the site exaggerates.
Measuring the Effect of Improved Web Writing
To measure the effect of some of the content
guidelines we had identified, we developed five
different versions of the same website (same
basic information; different wording; same site
navigation). We then had users perform the same
tasks with the different sites. As shown in the
table,
measured usability was dramatically higher
for the concise version (58% better) and for the
scannable version (47% better). And when we
combined three ideas for improved writing style
into a single site, the result was truly
stellar: 124% better usability.
|
|
|
|
Web design South Africa, Web Design Johannesburg, web design Sandton - African web design company
|
| |
|
|
