How to get writing for the web right
There is no clever trick in this one, just a handful of decisions worth making deliberately. The short answer to writing for the web is that it is mostly a sequence of small decisions, not one big one.
Content is the part of a project most likely to be underestimated and most likely to delay a launch. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.
What is actually at stake
People scan before they read. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.
The steps
- Establish what you have today before changing anything
- Short paragraphs and clear subheadings do the heavy lifting
- Cut the throat-clearing and start with the point
- Write down the decision so the next person does not re-litigate it
Cut the throat-clearing and start with the point. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.
Making it stick
In practice
Writing for the web is largely an editing job: the first draft is always longer than it needs to be. Three things worth confirming about writing for the web before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Short paragraphs and clear subheadings do the heavy lifting — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.