Sunday, May 13, 2007

Do not Let Your Website Let You Down - Tips For Powerful Web Content

You cannot wait to make your prospects come to you on their own; instead, you have to pull them through many online and offline channels including - corporate website, webinars, podcasts, blogs, online marketing, email marketing, articles, press releases, direct marketing, event participation and more. Bottom line - you need quality content to execute all these successfully. Here are some tips for powerful web writing.

How do your visitors read your website?

Your readers don't read each and every word on your webpage; rather they just scan through the text and if something interesting catches their attention, they read on. There are millions of other websites competing for attention, so it is difficult for readers to concentrate. This is accentuated by the eye-tiring nature of the screen and lack of time.

How to enable your visitors to find what they are looking for?

To help your readers reach the right information faster you have to make sure that the content is scannable. The easiest way to do this is:

* Writing meaningful and user-related headlines and sub-headlines, and highlighting them
* Including bulleted or numbered lists wherever possible
* Making your hyperlinks descriptive as opposed to "click here"
* Following a logical sequence of thought while writing

What is the logical way of writing?

Invert the Pyramid Rule that you know. Talk about the conclusion first. This gives the most important part of the content as soon as the visitor starts reading. The fact is that users do not scroll down. Your aim should be to write for them, not for your ego. Visitors who are really interested will anyways scroll down.

How to make your visitors trust you?

Credibility is most important for a web-user. The design, the colors, the content, the layout, and the quality of graphics all make a major impact. The only way to boost credibility is to have high-quality content that proves that you have great deal of knowledge in your domain, or have a huge number of quality in-bound links. Make your readers believe that you are for real.

How is web writing different from conventional publishing?

Divide the printed content by two if you are planning to use the same info for the web. While reading on a printed sheet of paper the eye-movement of the reader is entirely different. For the web - your content should be short, concise, and devoid of all the jargon. The length of the sentences and paragraphs should be short. Write in a direct and user-friendly tone.

How to stay away from boastful writing?

People are looking for information not about how great you are. They want to know exactly the features and benefits of your product or service. They do not want to know how many offices, number of employeesFind Article, or years of experience you possess. Get straight to the point and offer them exactly what they want - straightforward information.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Do Right Marketing offers freelance content writing services. These include writing for the web, intranet, marketing and sales collateral such as case studies, newsletters, whitepapers, articles, blog posts, website navigation, editing, and proofreading, etc. Visit: http://www.dorightmarketing.com to know more.