Writing for the web: a practical guide

Every audit we run turns up some version of this. This guide covers what writing for the web actually involves, where it usually goes wrong, and how to tell whether yours is in reasonable shape.

Content is the part of a project most likely to be underestimated and most likely to delay a launch. Nothing below assumes a large team or a large budget — most of it is a decision somebody has to make and then write down.

What it costs to ignore

People scan before they read. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Anything you cannot measure here, you are deciding by taste, which is fine as long as everyone knows it.

For most businesses the question is not whether this matters but how much of it is worth doing right now. That depends on what you are trying to achieve in the next few months, not on best practice in the abstract. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped.

How we handle it

Short paragraphs and clear subheadings do the heavy lifting. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

Pages that answer a real question outlive pages written to fill a slot in a sitemap. The version that works in practice is usually less elaborate than the version described in the guides.

Cut the throat-clearing and start with the point. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

A working checklist

If you want a quick read on where you stand, work through this. Anything you cannot answer confidently is where to start.

• People scan before they read
• Short paragraphs and clear subheadings do the heavy lifting
• Cut the throat-clearing and start with the point
• Someone is named as the owner, not just assumed to be
• There is a date in the calendar to review it again
• The decision and the reasoning behind it are written down somewhere findable
• You could explain the current setup to a new hire in five minutes

Common failure modes

The most common failure is not doing this badly. It is doing it once, during a launch, and never revisiting it. Circumstances move, the setup does not, and the gap widens quietly until something breaks or somebody notices the numbers.

• It was configured during a launch and has not been touched since
• Different people in the business believe different things are true about it
• There is no way to tell whether the last change helped or hurt
• The only person who understands it has left, or is about to

Writing for the web is largely an editing job: the first draft is always longer than it needs to be. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one.

How we approach it

On our projects this gets handled during the build rather than added afterwards, because retrofitting it costs several times more than including it. We write down what was decided and why, so the next person to touch it is not guessing.

If you are working with someone else, the questions worth asking are simple: who owns this, how will we know it is working, and what happens when it needs to change?

What to do next

Pick the single item from the checklist above that would cause the most trouble if it turned out to be wrong. Fix that one, confirm it worked, then move on. None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.