Download How are you going to tell them? Planning your

Web awareness
and writing
October 2014
Your website isn’t written for you,
it’s for your visitors.
When we visit a web page, it’s
usually to complete a task:
•Find information
•Answer a question
•Report a fault.
Writing for the web is
different from most other
types of writing.
We skim and scan until we find
the information we want.
So it’s important to only write out
what’s really necessary.
Reading online content
• Reading is slower on
screen
• Web readers tire quickly
• Visitors scan your content
• They leave quickly
Eye-tracking results mainly
produce an ‘F’ or ‘E’ pattern
on the web page.
Creating good web content
requires three stages:
1. Planning
2. Writing
3. Editing
Planning your content
1. Who is your audience?
2. What are you going to tell them?
3. How are you going to tell them?
Understanding your audience
Write with a specific person
in mind.
When you write for ‘everybody’,
you write for nobody.
Understanding your audience
Most readers:
•Probably have better things to do
•Rarely read from start to finish
•Always read between the lines
•Aren’t idiots. But probably aren’t experts in your
subject area.
What’s your message?
What’s the one thing you want
your readers to know or do
when they’ve finished reading?
What’s your message?
If you want them to complete an action — click a
button, sign up for a newsletter — make it obvious.
Give them plenty of opportunity to do so.
Don’t assume they’ll read to the end.
How are you going to tell them?
The voice and tone you adopt can
have a big impact on how your
readers perceive you.
And what you have to say.
What’s the purpose of your site?
Think about the site you’ll be working on:
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Who is your audience?
What do you think they want to do?
What do you want them to do?
What’s the one thing you could do to the site that
would have the most positive impact for your
audience?
Talk us through this.
Writing your content
1. Clear and simple
2. Headings
3. Links
Keep it simple
That doesn’t mean you need to
dumb things down.
Instead, find the core of your
message. And remove everything
else.
“It’s simple. I just
removed everything
that didn’t look like
David.”
– Michaelangelo
Clear and simple language
• Adopt a conversational style
• Use ‘you’ and ‘we’
• Avoid complex sentence structures
• Write in the active form (most of the time):
• Yes — We did the research so that...
• No — The research was done by us so that..
• Avoid slang or jargon
• Use simple words where possible:
• ‘End’, not ‘terminate’
• ‘Because’, not ‘in view of the fact’
Active/passive voice
No — “Books may be borrowed from the library.”
Yes — “You can borrow books from the library.”
No — “It is recommended that...”
Yes — “We recommend that...”
Plain English
No — “…subsequent approval of which will be a
pre-requisite to the raising of any internal order
mechanism.”
Yes — “You’ll need approval before we can raise an
internal order.”
Clear and simple structure
• Express one idea per paragraph
• Start pages and paragraphs with the conclusion
followed by the details
• Use lists wherever possible
• Bullets when there’s no specific order
• Numbered lists when there is
What is good content?
Imagine you are a prospective student trying to find
and apply for accommodation. Take a look at some of
these sites and note down what you think are
examples of good and bad content.
1.Abertay Dundee: http://go.bath.ac.uk/7dtz
2.Warwick: http://go.bath.ac.uk/hzqc
3.Edinburgh: http://go.bath.ac.uk/24ct
4.UCL: http://go.bath.ac.uk/khgl
5.York: http://go.bath.ac.uk/3zwi
Good content effectively communicates its intended
message to its intended audience.
Editing your content
1. Kill your darlings
2. Say it out loud
3. Give it to someone else
“Get rid of half the words on
each page, then get rid of half
of what’s left”
– Steve Krug, usability expert
Kill your darlings
Be ruthless. Cut anything that
doesn’t serve your message.
Even if it’s your favourite part.
Say it out loud
This is the best way to test the tone
and pace of your writing.
It really helps with punctuation too.
Give it to someone else
Preferably someone who isn’t
familiar with the subject.
This helps make sure that what
you’ve written is clear and that you
haven’t made any assumptions.
Guidelines and support
Supporting your content
Guidelines help us all to work towards a unified look and feel
across the website. They help us to position the University
brand and produce high-quality, audience-focused web
content.
Editorial style guide – how to write for the web, plus house
spellings, help with punctuation and grammar, and more.
Image guide – guidance about choosing, preparing and
uploading appropriate images to bring our web content to life.
Blogging style guide – advice for the University of Bath’s
blogging community to help them keep their posts in shape
and their readers happy.
Images
A well-chosen picture can be worth
a thousand words.
But it needs to add to the story,
rather than just repeat what’s there.
Images
• Appropriate for the content of the
page
• Support not distract
• Always use alt text
Here to help and advise - [email protected]
Alt text
We add hidden text, or 'alt text', to images on our web
pages. This way, there's always content for viewers to
engage with, even if the picture doesn't display on their
reading device.
• Alt text is an alternative to the image.
• Aim to explain what the image says within the
context of the page.
Photography guidelines:
https://wiki.bath.ac.uk/display/visID/Photography
Using meaningful headings
Headings help:
• Users to understand contents
• at a glance
• Screen readers to detect
structure
• Search engines to index your
content
Using meaningful headings
What should you do?
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Use headings generously
Make headings outline your structure
Keep headings simple and descriptive
Use sentence case
Link text
Never use ‘here’ or ‘click here’.
Users, search engines and non-visual browsers rely
on informative link text.
Write link text that:
• Makes sense on its own
• Is long enough to click easily
• Uses action phrases
• Yes – Order a prospectus
• No – Prospectus
Link text
Try rewriting these examples of bad link text:
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Click here to download Safari
Visit our website to learn about our research
For information about the medical centre click here
Click here to order now
Tell me more about Web Design
Download a brochure here
Metadata
• Data about data
• Information that describes the content you are
creating
• Makes information easy to find for search
engine
• Helps with accessibility
Metadata
1. Page title
2. Keywords
3. Description
Page title
• First piece of content screen reading software
will read out to a user
• Short but accurate description of the content
• Don’t repeat the same title through your site.
• Should follow ’page name’ | the department
name’.
• http://www.bath.ac.uk/digital/about-us.html
• Page title: About us | Digital Marketing and
Communications
Page description
• What you see in search engine results page
describing the pages returned.
• 155 characters, including spaces
• Try to use some of your main keywords in the
description
Keywords
• Search engine uses these keywords and
phrases to try to provide accurate results
• Five to ten keywords or phrases that accurately
describe contents of page
• Try to make combination of words unique to
page as possible
• Don’t use same ones throughout the site as will
compete with each other for search results
• Use commas to separate words
The legal bits
Copyright www.bath.ac.uk/web/copyright/
•for example, don’t use photographic content without consent or paying for it
Advertising standards http://www.asa.org.uk/
•we should always be legal, honest, decent and truthful
Equality Act (2010) http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents
•use inclusive language (according to race, religion, culture, gender, age, disability and so on)
•don’t create a two-tier level of provision that discriminates.
Freedom of Information (FOI) www.bath.ac.uk/foi/
•the publication scheme and right of access request
Data Protection and Privacy Statement www.bath.ac.uk/web/privacy
•always gain consent to use personal information. For example, using a model release form,
permission to use names and addresses
•www.bath.ac.uk/data-protection
Disclaimer www.bath.ac.uk/web/disclaimer/
Questions and general discussion
Now think about your web pages.
• How do you think you could improve them now?
• Are there any issues you’d like advice on?
• How could you use the tools we’ve discussed?
Here to help and advise - [email protected]
What’s next?
Editing in the CMS essentials training
Course covers:
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using web awareness and web writing principles
using the CMS to make simple page changes
creating links to pages
pasting content from another source
adding contact details from Person Finder.