Five Ways to Increase the Power of Your Web Site
By Melissa Donovan
Nowadays, everyone has a web site. The competition is fierce, so having a more effective website, with better search engine ranking is essential to success. By implementing efficient design and functional content, you can keep visitors interested. Keywords and regular updates will help your search engine rating, and proper navigation will make your site user friendly and attractive to searchers. Here are five simple ways that you can increase the effectiveness of your website:
Design
Sites that are weighed down by images take too long to load, and many potential visitors will navigate away from your page before they even see it. If it doesn’t load within a few seconds, you need to rethink your byte size. Keep images, including backgrounds, to a bare minimum and make sure they are optimized for web display. This also applies to new technologies such as flashy widgets and animations, many of which do not translate well for users who are running older systems or software. While artistic sites that feature films or graphic art reap the benefits of cutting edge web technology, most business sites will suffer trying to wow customers this way.
Colors, fonts, and other design elements also don’t translate well on different browsers and platforms. Take the extra steps to ensure that your site presents itself properly on Mac and PC as well as the many browsers that are available, especially Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Mozilla Firefox.
Text should be easy to read and sized appropriately. Fancy fonts and extra large or extremely small text comes across as unprofessional and difficult to read. Keep color in mind! Dark text on a light background works best and is easier on the eyes.
Content
The best design in the world won’t engage a visitor unless the content delivers. Avoid superfluous verbiage. On the web, people rarely read–they scan, so it’s critical for written content to be direct and concise, brief and informative.
Be sure all of the critical information you want to present about your company, products, and services is available on your site. Not only will this make you more accessible to your customers, it will also field phone calls and other inquiries because the modern consumer almost always goes to the web first when they are looking for information or have questions.
The writing should be persuasive but it needs to come across as informative. Sales-y language works well in ads and presentations, but often come across as preachy on the Internet. Make sure the tone is friendly and professional.
Keeping it Current
Many web sites are launched and then ignored. Your site is a valuable marketing tool. It needs to be updated on a regular basis. Not only will this please search engines, it will keep the site fresh, and entice visitors to keep coming back for more. Stale sites are often left in the dust by search engines and Internet surfers, so set up a plan to update the site on a weekly basis, and stick to it.
Keywords
Keywords help search engines sort out where a site fits into a directory, and how a site should rank on a search results page. Be sure that you use the most important, defining words on your site in titles, and make sure those titles are presented as text, not images.
Navigation
Navigation is part of design but deserves its own mention because it’s often overlooked in favor of presentation aesthetics. Most sites have a menu at the top of every page, or in a sidebar. This makes it easy for visitors to find their way around and enables them to quickly navigate to what they are looking for.
Site Maps
Site maps provide an index to your site, which allows your visitors a way to find information or pages that may be buried. Search engines love site maps and use them to quickly rank and index your web site, so even if you have a simple site with only a few pages, and a very proficient menu, a site map is a must-have for search purposes.
In today’s world, a web site is one of the most powerful tools that any business or professional can use to reach customers. The convenient, accessible nature of the Internet lends itself to information sharing, and every business should strive to share information about its products with the public. Proper design, quality content, regular updates, keywords, and site maps are essential for increasing the effectiveness of your web site, maximizing on its power.
Web Writing: It’s a Rush
By Melissa Donovan
One of the earliest bits of advice any aspiring writer will receive is know your audience. You don’t use the same language when writing for the business world as you would use when writing for young adult fiction readers. The same consideration must be taken into account based on the medium for which you are writing.The Web is often called the information superhighway. The amount of data that can be accessed on the Internet is astounding, and sometimes overwhelming. Most web surfers expect instant gratification; if they don’t find what they’re looking for within an instant, they quickly move on. A site must grab its visitors’ attention through clean, attractive design but more importantly, it must present brief, concise content.
Simply put, web writing needs to be short. Its objective is to get to the point as quickly as possible. Content designed for the online audience must use cleverly placed links and images that entice visitors to click to longer pieces, which explore a given subject in greater detail than a short 250-word piece can offer.
Of course, this is the rule rather than the exception. Some content naturally lends itself to greater length and scope, as would be the case on a site that provides online books or in-depth research material.
A writer’s first job in approaching any assignment or project is to understand their audience, and to take into account the medium through which the material will be published. Writing for the web offers new and exciting challenges for writers to explore, and the most successful web writers will know how to chip away the excess and get to the hard-driven point.
Who’s Writing Your Copy?
By Melissa Donovan
Every professional combines talent, skill, and experience to develop an expertise in the field. Writing is no exception. Effective communication requires an understanding of one’s audience, knowledge of the subject, and a mastery of language and word craft.A writer’s talent lies in the practice of writing. It takes a special character to sit down day after day, putting words on the page. Many individuals with no understanding of grammar or syntax are talented at developing this habit. Many others who are deft and articulate do not have the will or ambition to make writing a daily practice. The first rule of being a writer is to write regularly and frequently.
Professional writers must do more than merely string words together. They must have a firm grip on the technicalities of writing, which include spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Every experienced writer knows the value of these basic tools. At the same time, it is crucial to recognize additional components, which must be utilized to make one’s work stand out. Rhythm, vocabulary, and voice are paramount to a writer’s success. Like any professional, a writer knows that developing a well-stocked toolbox is just one of the many building blocks of success.
Many professional writers start out as children composing poetry and short stories. They go on to write top notch papers during high school, and then major in writing or another communications-related field in college. During these years, a writer gains experience, the most precious commodity of all. Instruction and feedback from teachers, professors, and peers is priceless in forming a mature and professional quality writer. Through education and training, both inside and outside of educational institutes, a writer learns the subtle tricks of the craft and develops a polished voice.
Knowing one’s audience is one of the major cornerstones of professional writing. “Who is going to read this?” is a critical question that has to be addressed before the first word ever hits the page. A piece focusing on the political state of the nation could be written for an MTV blog, or for a daily paper read mostly by baby boomers. These two demographics, hip young people in their teens and twenties, and wise middle-aged folks approaching their sixties require very different approaches, language, and imagery in order for the piece to be effective and hit its target.
The same is true with subject matter. The tone of a political piece will have a serious edge that wouldn’t resonate in a piece about reality television. Different subjects and demographics require distinctive strategies.
To write well about any subject requires knowledge of the subject. Thus, a writer must be adept at quickly absorbing information. While some writers may choose to become specialists in a given field, as is the case with technical writers, most writers tackle a wide range of topics throughout their careers. The ability to learn a subject in a very brief amount of time, and relate that information to a reading audience is one of the special skills that writers develop.
Many people can form a coherent sentence, but a professional writer will craft a compelling, dynamic sentence with a clear objective in mind. Writers write every day. Good writers master the art of communication. Professional writers do it daily, are experts at word craft, plus embrace a broad range of skills and practices that contribute to their writer’s toolbox. The only question that remains is this: Do you have a professional writing your copy?
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