Agencies
Services
Writing & Creating Content
Writing With Purpose In Mind
People typically visit your web sites to learn more information about services you offer. Creating high quality content on your pages will allow people to effortlessly determine:
- Where is the service I am looking for?
- What are some of the features of the offered services?
- What do you do to provide this service?
- What are the benefits of selecting you for this service?
- Is this the service I am looking for?
- How do I contact this service?
These are thing you can do to help your audience find what they are looking for:
Write for your Audience
Information should be presented in ways that are easily perceived and understood.
Reading Level
Our accessibility standards say that content presented on the web should be suitable for someone with a third-grade education level. Keeping your content so that it is easy to read and understand will result in a much higher likelihood that the information will be retained by the visitor.
Use images & Minimize Text
Homepages and section landing pages are where you can make a splash and catch the user’s attention with a more graphical display. Using pictures and icons will help convey the purpose and relevance of each section.
Format the Page correctly
The website should be easy to navigate, regardless of device being used.
Sentence and Paragraph structure
Adding paragraph breaks can help visitors scan and digest content more easily. It also naturally provides more white space, making the page more visually appealing and less overwhelming. At the longest, paragraphs should be only 4-5 sentences.
Identify separations clearly
Long-form writing is not often applicable on the web. When presenting similar ideas listed one after another, try formatting them into bulleted and numbered lists, or breaking up the text with images.
You should also use headings throughout your website to guide your visitors and to help them quickly find information as they scan the text.
Remove Barriers to Finding Content
Make sure you present your message in the most clear and direct way.
Remove Sliders And Carousels
Content that is hidden behind extra clicks or on deeply nested pages will rarely be seen by you audience. Any content hidden behind sliders, rotating banners, carousels, and accordions will be hard for your audience to find. You should ask yourself if this hidden content is even worth putting on your site at all.
Reduce The Number of Choices You Offer
Hick’s Law states that, as you increase the number of options you offer someone, the decision time increases as well. This is often referred to as “analysis paralysis.” Ideally you should present your visitors with a limited number of clear and concise options.
Make Navigation Easy
Think of your website as a map with lots of different destinations. Your visitors should be able arrive at any point on that map and still be able to find the destination they are looking for.
Create Distinct And Directive Calls-to-Action
A Call-to-Action (or CTA) is any button, graphic, text block or other indicator which encourages your audience to perform an interaction on your site. CTA’s that clearly state their intent, will work better at converting casual viewers into interactive participants and a deeper engaged audience.
Use Breadcrumbs And Other Navigation Cues
Breadcrumbs and child page navigation are a great way tell your audience where they are. It is important to implement a well thoughtout page hierarchy so your breadcrumbs and page navigation makes sense to your organization, and your audience.