What to ask your agency about writing for the web

Every audit we run turns up some version of this. If you are briefing an agency or a freelancer on writing for the web, these questions are worth asking early.

Writing for the web is largely an editing job: the first draft is always longer than it needs to be. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

Questions worth asking

• Who will actually do this work, and have they done it before?
• How will we know afterwards whether it worked?
• What happens if it needs changing in a year?
• What are you assuming that we have not confirmed?

What a good answer sounds like

People scan before they read. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

Cut the throat-clearing and start with the point. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

The short version

Pages that answer a real question outlive pages written to fill a slot in a sitemap. 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
• Cut the throat-clearing and start with the point — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.