14. As clear as mud
You only have a couple of hundred words to convey your message. Keep it clear, precise and to the point. Choose your words carefully.
Your users are looking for instant gratification and it’s your responsibility to give it to them. So sex up your dossier, but remember to be true to yourself…
Clear And Pure
Coupled with the fact that you only have a limited number of seconds to ‘hook’ the user to your offering, you only have a few sentences to get that message across. Therefore, you must ensure that your site makes logical sense as well as grammatical sense. Would you want to buy a book from a shop with misspelled posters, or sports equipment from a store that fails to categorise your favourite team in the right league? No. Nor would I.
Well-Crafted Text Or Blurbs Are Paramount
Web sites should convey a message as quickly and painlessly as they can. Do not allow your writers the opportunity or free rein to practise flowery prose and personal diatribe about how wonderful they think your product or service is – let others sing your praises. Your writers should earn their pay through clear, crisp and engaging text. Blurbs should be teasers and no more. Let the image of the product, reviews or further information convince them that this information is good. A blurb needs to be like a dagger – short and to the point.
Order In Chaos
Bear in mind that despite years of practice at reading from left to right, as you are doing right now, we don’t read web pages in the same manner. Although there are many rules to be gleaned from printed text, and newspapers in particular, one thing to note is that your reader won’t be reading everything in the order that it is laid out. Instead of the usual left to right, or even top to bottom, we weave our way across a web page, erratically – attracted by certain words, buttons or images. Your user is scanning for information and there is no real logic behind how their eye is jumping – therefore, break everything up into clearly delineated sectors. Break lots of text with an image or a heading and give people links to move on. They want to taste you in ‘bite size’ pieces, so be as palatable as you can (less is morsel).
Say It How It Is
The temptation to waffle is strong, but resist it with all your might. Padding a web site with useless information is more transparent on the internet than it is on any other medium. We will tolerate time wasting on the TV, in the newspapers, on the radio and especially during football matches – but on ‘my time’, surfing the web, I want the synopsis. Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them and tell them again (but don’t repeat yourself). By the time you have done all this, there isn’t much time left to do anything else.
How did it go?
Q. Surely, if people are used to the layout of a newspaper, it makes sense to copy what is familiar. Is it not right to follow the newspaper format completely?
A. To an extent this is true, but you are not printing on paper and you are not printing news. Every medium is different and the web is no exception. There are conventions but not rules.
Q. We use a software package to upload our web pages; the technical manager does not have control over how the items or sections are displayed. What can we do to be different?
A. If you are not happy with the look and feel of your site, you should change your software or better still invest in a brand new web site designed and developed by a developer. You’ll spend more, but you’ll get the desired effect.
Q. Our web site has a specific audience in mind. The directors are keen that we stick to those conventions and not the conventions of the web. Are they right to think like this?
A. If you are on the web then you must confirm to web rules, no matter what your web site is offering. Even practitioners of your art or believers of your system or buyers of your products are also general web users. They won’t think less of you for ‘selling out’; they will simply know, intrinsically, what to do next.
Here is an idea for you…
Look at your homepage carefully and give yourself a few seconds to see what parts/words/images catch your eye first. Now scroll to the bottom of the page and look at what you have left. If a user were to come across this part of your homepage first, would it be as apparent what the web site was trying to achieve? Your users will come to you through many different links and references, and sometimes by sheer luck alone. Wherever they land on your site it must tell the story. Scan your web site for black holes and ensure that they fit with the rest of the site.
Defining idea…
‘Freedom is just chaos, with better lighting.’
Alan Dean Foster
Defining idea…
‘A life lived in chaos is an impossibility…’
Madeline L’Engle