7 Tips For Writing For The Web

Writing copy for the web isn’t the same as writing for a newspaper, book, or ads – it requires understanding how users read online. Understanding that users scan content instead of committing full-force to in-depth reading is required, and this means that our content and style of writing should support the user’s natural reading preference as much as possible.  Thankfully, it’s not difficult to achieve.

Here are 7 tips for how to make your content better online so that users find what they need. Throughout the article, we’ll use an example that we are writing an article for changing a flat tire and we will use the infamous latin text Lorem Ipsum for filler where needed.

Break Up Content Into Sections

Content that is a gigantic run-on paragraph is extremely boring, and it’s also difficult to read.  This method can work well for a book, article, or essay, but online users have the option of leaving your site to find another.  This can lead to an increase in bounce rate for your key landing pages, as well as a short time on site metric.  Here are some examples of good and bad content broken up into sections.

Examples (click bars below to expand):

From the above examples, we can see the the last section, Content Broken Up Into Sections, has the best readabilty and allows the user to scan the content at will.  Writing content this way certainly allows for better readability, and helps users who prefer to scan content.

Use One Topic Per Paragraph

This compliments the first point – if every major section has a different header, then every paragraph should revolve around a single topic.  This makes it easier to digest content, as well as makes the writing neater and clean.

Also, don’t be afraid to have short paragraphs.  As long as the topic is unique and seperate from the previous topic, most of the time it will warrant being used in a separate paragraph.

Use Section Headers

Further enhancing our first point is to use section headers to break up long content and summarize the section.  This is the greatest way to allow users to scan your content, and is the easiest way to improve readability.  Furthering our content example above, we will add some sample headers to improve readability.

Examples (click bar below to expand):

We can see that with the addition of section headers, we’ve really helped our users out by giving them a short, descriptive summary about the section.

Modify Lists To Become Bullet Points

Whenever your content calls for a list of items, consider putting that content into a bulleted list.  Lists are a great way to draw the eye to a specially designed element, while noting that the elements are of a list.  Take a look at the following.

Examples:

From the above example, the bulleted list is a far superior way to showcase needed items.  That’s because lists support the idea that one item per line is used, and is easier for a visitor to scan versus having the information presented as a sentence.

Format Strategically

In some paragraphs, you may wish to call our or highlight specific items – things such as an industry term, or a page’s main topic or phrase.  In this case using bold tags, or italic tags inside of your content can help accentuate and make the content easier to scan as well.

Sometimes, your design or WordPress theme may include tools that can help create special attention-grabbing sections.  One such tool that I highly recommend is WP Shortcode by MyThemeShop.  It’s very flexible and offers many options to format content.

Include Relevant Images

A picture is worth a thousand words

The above statement is a wise proverb.  In writing for the web, it can prove invaluable in many ways – photos and images can help to break up content into readable sections, while also helping to tell a story that words alone could not.

Use Photos To Break Up Content

Using a photo to help visually break up content can help create “digestable” chunks of information, if the image fill the width of the content, as seen above.  If you don’t have images that are that large, you can use them as asides to the content to help create a sense of flow.

How-To and Instructional Content Photos

This is a no-brainer.  If your content is based around an instructional theme, adding visuals will most certainly help users.  Imagine in our tire scenario describing where a jack point is, what it is for, where it is located at on a car, and how to set up a jack stand to secure the car. Now, consider using a photo to tell that story.

It’s much easier to describe certain situations, with photos, so that users can see where and how.  Consider taking your own photos, using screen captures, or using free stock photography to help tell your story.

Include Links To Relevant Content

Sometimes your content will need to build upon itself, or make presumptions about a topic or method that the user may or may not already be familiar with.  Linking to other pages for a topic (whether on your site, or on another respected authority site) helps your users who may need additional information or may need to brush up on the subject.  They also allow you a great SEO opportunity to deep link to content on your own site.

Closing

In short, writing content for the Internet is not difficult, but it does require much more thought about how users read, and being accommodating towards their reading style.  If you have any tips for writing for the web, leave a comment below.