Website content, called ‘text’ or ‘copy’, should be written differently to a printed brochure. When writing your website text you should follow the ABC:

A = Attention grabbing

The average surfers attention span is only around 7 seconds, your website should capture your viewer’s interest and direct them to explore your website further.

B = Brevity

Less is more - there is nothing more off-putting than a wall of text greeting the viewer. Text on the web is read 25% slower than on a written page therefore its needs to be more concise.

C = Clarity

Your website should communicate your message clearly, the viewer should immediately get the idea of who you are, what you do and how to progress towards their (and your) goal e.g. contact you for further info or make a order.

My advice on writing good website text :

• keep paragraphs short and snappy in readable fonts
• use bullet points and short line lengths
• write engaging headings to motivate the visitor
• highlight keywords in text e.g. bold
• avoid marketing ‘fluff’- talk to the visitor in your own voice
• insert keywords into text to help your search engine ranking

If you are getting a web designer to develop your site you should first supply him with some text - this will help them from the beginning to create a site that communicates your message and also helps them to gett the layout and image selection right.

Need more advice about your website? contact us for a free consultation

There’s nothing worse for business than a website that doesn’t work properly. Web Professional have to take into account a lot of variables when designing a website and web standards, browsers and operating systems are constantly evolving. A website developed 2 or 3 years ago can now fail on many fronts.

Your business website should meet the following standards:

Accessibility

The Disability Discrimination Act brought in legislation to UK and European Law concerning websites. Your site needs to be accessible to all users and guidelines have been laid out by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

A simple test for sight-impaired accessibility is to see if your websites text resizes using your browsers options.

Browser Compatibility

Websites are rendered differently in different versions of Internet browser, for instance a website designed for Internet Explorer 6 may look different in Internet Explorer 7. Your websites layout should not break whatever the user is viewing it through.

Code Quality

HTML code is the building blocks of your website, if this code is badly written it can cause your websites layout to break and links fail leaving your visitor with a bad impression of your business.

Check your websites code here: http://validator.w3.org/

Screen Sizes

Average users screen sizes have increased from 800×600 to 1024×780 and bigger in the last few years with the wide spread adoption of large flat screen monitors. However your website should be viewable whatever screen size used. While vertical scrolling is accepted, having to scroll horizontally to view content is a turn-off.

Speed

While the majority of web surfers have switched to broadband, a significant proportion of your customers will still be a dial-up connection to view your website. If these customers have to wait too long for your pages to download, they will soon turn off and click on to your competitors instead.

Speed test your website here: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

Usability

A usable website is one that the visitor can easily navigate, read and understand. Large companies spend fortunes to have their sites tested by usability agencies. However you can run your own small-scale tests by asking family and friends to perform various tasks (e.g. purchase a product, find a price) and ask for their feedback.

If your website is letting you down? contact us for a free consultation