Research at various companies have shown that re-writing web content to make information easier to find and to understand can more than double the
effectiveness of a website. Your audience or clients will be much more satisfied with their experience on your web site and come back to your site if you
organize and write your web pages in a way that lets them find the information they're looking for quickly and easily; accurately answers their questions; and, helps them complete a task.

The knowledge and skills you'll acquire during this workshop should help you begin to make changes in the way you organize and present web content to achieve significant gains in usability.

Learning outcomes

• Understand how users read online.
• Understand how different ways of presenting information make your site easier or hardier for visitors to use.
• Revise web pages so users can more quickly find the information they're looking for.
• Put together effective web content style guidelines for your organization

Topics

• How your audience is reading onlin: what they want to do and what they need to know
• Organizing website content
• Chunking information by sequence, audience, task, etc.
• Writing for different kinds of web pages (home page, pathway pages,
• information pages etc.)
• Focusing on essential messages
• Marketing without using "marketese"
• Making your texts more scannable
• Using message statements, Q & A's, balance and progression in headings
• Writing better paragraphs: consistency, voice, paragraph, length, prioritizing information
• Writing "strong"
• Writing meaningful links
• Using lists, tables and images effectively
• Drafting web content style guidelines for your company or department.
• Testing your site for usability and SEO