The Art of Writing Web Content Part III
Unfortunately, no matter how good the content you write is - ain’t nobody going to read it. Well it’s not that bad - but you certainly can not expect someone to curl up on the couch and read your website. They will, however, probably scan it for a few seconds to see if it’s what they are looking for, and move on if its’ not.
To this regard there are a few essential rules to keep in mind when creating your website.
Create visual order: your content should be presented in an order across your site that tells your readers the importance of your content. Combine this with colour, contrast, font size and weight and relative positioning against other content to emphasise its’ importance.
Make the page easy on the eyes, but at the same time interesting: The quickest way to lose readers is with small type, bad colour combinations and wide columns.
The introduction is the important part of the content: your website visitors tend to skim the read your introduction paragraph first and for this reason it should be concise and summarise what you web page is about.
Use headlines to draw a users attention into paragraphs: giving paragraphs headings serves to highlight the paragraph for the user who can subsequently read quickly or detailed through your work. Use the content of the headings to draw attention to the paragraph and summarise its’ content. A good tool. to use is to ask a question that is subsequently answered in the following paragraph. (and don’t forget your keywords for search engines!)
Writing effective web content is not easy. Verbose sites loose a readers interest, too sparse a site and the user feels that page has nothing to offer. Finding the right mix of imagery and content is essential to capturing your readers interest while they scan through the Internet looking for that “right” page.
Tags: Web design