Waffle Busting! Basic Web Content Advice For Start Ups

People have short attention spans, especially on the web. So you need to deliver your message in the most concise way possible. This is often tricky from a web content writing perspective. When your are passionate about your business or organisation and have alot to say its easy to dilute your impact with waffle.

I would always recommend seeking the services of an experience web copywriter, but in reality not every web project has budget for a copywriter. In the event that you’re writing your own content, here are some quick tips to help you craft engaging web content for your users.

Keep it snappy – less is more

Write down everything you want to say, then go through a process of reduction and refinement . Consider if all the information is truly relevant to the user. Are you getting your point across in the most concise and engaging way possible?

Show them the way – subheaders

Web editorial is consumed differently to printed editorial. when browsing online people are more likely to scroll fast and skim read, especially on mobile devices. You have a few split seconds to engage someone before they decide whether to invest their time in reading a page of content or not. An effective way of drawing in the user is to break up a big page of text into easy to digest sub titles. this gives the user a quick overview of the content and helps them make a more informed decision.

Break it up – bullets and dividers

Another effective way of breaking up your content is the use of bullet point lists. This is in summaries and comparisons. You may be able reduce a paragraph of descriptive text into a nice concise bullet point list, giving your content structure and something for the eyes to easily digest

Highlights – Pull Quotes

Featuring a pull quote is a great way of Creating structure and visual interest in you page of content. It can be lavished with some extra typographic design and will give your page a more hand crafter feel.

Routing

Everything on the web is a user journey and a page of content should never be a dead end. Once someone has read a page, think about where you would like them to go next. Once you have this in mind, your designer can create some routing elements to help direct the user around your website.