Over the past few years, the notion that content is king on the web has become a mantra, or worse—cliche. A quick scan through various writing guides and how-to sites will show that great writing plays a huge role in a site’s conversion rates, readability, SEO rankings, and overall appeal to users. Yet as far as I can tell, there’s no tried and true doctrine for writing for the web. So how do you learn how to do it?
Advice on the subject of good copy covers a wide range of tips, from “stressing the benefits rather than the features of your service (focusing on your customer)” to “writing out character sketches for your target audience.” All good ideas, for sure, but I think it’s important to focus on the basics.
I’m still a n00b so I can’t speak with real authority on the subject, but I’ve learned a few web writing tricks (that I think have staying power) during my short time here at Blue Flavor. Here they are:
Write simply.
A website is a self-service center. People who visit your site should be able to read your copy easily and immediately know what you do/sell. They should also be able to quickly achieve something that interests them — like learning, buying, or selling. Technical jargon and floral language do not lend themselves to a pleasant or fruitful reading experience on the web. Period.
Learn yer grammar.
Yes, an informal writing style is important, but that doesn’t mean you can throw out all the conventions of the English language. And I’m not talking about the subtle nuances of the objective ‘whom’ and subjective ‘who’ here. I’m talking about knowing when to use a comma, or what a run-on sentence looks like.
Get a kick-ass editor.
Even if you’re a sentence whiz (and especially if you’re not), you should hire or enlist an editor to review your copy. Editors can help you work out conceptual kinks, refine your tone, or simply correct your commas. While it’s true that a lengthy review process can hinder publishing, there’s no use in putting out bad copy that’s hard to read.
Read more books.
Reading books is one of the best ways to learn how writing works. While reading, you end up absorbing the basics of storytelling and grammar — without even trying. And unlike blogs and other types of web-based writing, books require you to sit down and concentrate for a long period of time, so you absorb more about writing and its flow than you otherwise would.
Copy and web writing no doubt involve a different skill set than novel writing does and there are definitely additional ways of learning how to write, but I don’t think we can dispense with books altogether.
Practice.
For most people (including me), writing even the most innocuous of blog posts can involve much agony and unwarranted soul-searching. But writing is a delicate craft that takes a billion years to master. There’s only one way to deal with the pain, and that’s to write. A lot.
The bottomline.
The writing on your web page should be digestible, pithy, and effortlessly scan-able. It should, in other words, be tailored to people in a huge rush. These attributes make web copy much different than other types of writing.
Yet, despite its differences from (say) novel or journalistic forms, there’s a lot of overlap in the core skills required to write well for the web or otherwise. And barring your high school English teacher’s deep hatred of sentences that end with prepositions, you can learn a lot about those core skills by revisiting the basics. Like decent (or at least intentional) grammar, solid argumentation, reading books, and trying-trying again.
Good post and topic. I recently, and briefly, wrote on the importance of writing for the web, and I think it’s something that every organization with a website should know. It still shocks me to see how many websites have tons of copy that isn’t written for the web.
Great post — I particularly appreciate your discouraging “technical jargon and floral language” since it almost (in my opinion) runs contrary to the medium itself. People writing formal speak on their websites need to step outside their comfort zones (if even a little) to successfully bridge the gap to their web audience members (who are seeking that simplicity).
Really great article. It’s interesting, to me, to see the differences in writing for an online audience. I recently wrote an article, inspired by my local newspaper, about those differences.
You can read it here.
Apologies if I messed up the Markdown on that link.
I see a lot of traditional newspapers attempting to transition blogs over to their print edition, as though the two formats are comparable, or as though “blog style” writing somehow works well in a print format. (The last gasp of a dying medium, attempting to assimilate in the wrong direction?)
Has anyone written a book examining the rules of writing online? Is there a “set” of rules in this arena? What is the “MLA” handbook for online writing?
Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts.
Brian: I definitely haven’t seen anything like an MLA handbook for writing online, but I’d be interested in finding one. Maybe a traditional ‘rule set’ just isn’t appropriate for the medium?
The standard ‘how to write simply’ guides (by people like Gerry McGovern or even Ben Yagoda) are good intros to the main themes floating around these days.
i always come across this sort of thing, and i always have to disagree, i’m afraid. are you suggesting that writing for newspapers, flyers, brochures, books etc shouldn’t be digestible, pithy, and scannable?
good copywriting is good copywriting, regardless of the medium.
Patrick,
Good point. I agree that good copywriting is good copywriting, regardless of the medium.
Still, the kind of pithy-ness (ie, the colloquial and conversational tone) that works well for the web might not work as well for, say, a newspaper article or book. That’s the essence of what I was getting at.
There’s no doubt, though, that learning how to write well in general is the best way of learning how to write well for the web (or for any other type of publication, for that matter).
Thanks for your input.
I think the sticking point is the same sticking point when you think of designing for the web vs. designing for print. A solid design education is the best foundation for being good at either, but being a great web designer won’t necessarily translate into being a great print designer, just by virtue of having built up greatness in the former medium. You can’t just take the skills you’ve learned in print and move them over to an online arena, and expect to be successful. Knowing the rules SHOULD help you tweak your skills for success, though.
Similarly, knowing the rules of “writing” will make writing for the web easier just as it will make writing for print easier, but anyone who thinks that there’s not a difference in the way you target an audience on the web vs. how you target a print audience, and thus how one should tailor copy for those somewhat disparate audiences — is probably only doing one or the other, or doing both but not doing one or the other very successfully.
I consume print media differently — and at a different pace — than I consume web media. I’m more willing to settle into an extremely long print article, for example.
i should have expanded on my previous reply a bit more to say: rather than trying to categorise or differentiate copy styles by medium (web/print/radio/etc), it’s more useful to look at different contexts in which the reader/end-user will be consuming said copy, and to what end they’re consuming the copy (are they just looking for some quick information? looking for a quick information/humor/etc fix? are they doing serious academic research? etc).
i always hear the adage that “people don’t like to read on the web, they just scan”. now i’d posit that this is nothing to do with the medium itself. for instance, if i get a tabloid newspaper to read on the bus, i also don’t read it line by line…i scan it, just the same way that people supposedly do with all web content. so, it’s not the fact that it’s on screen or on paper, but the nature of the content and what i’m hoping to get out of it.
anyway, not completely disagreeing with anybody here, just widening the discourse…
Thanks for the tips. I should now pay more attention to what and how I’m writing. Cheers.
I thought this article was interesting, as I am seeking to learn how to write better for my blog. Perhaps what I need to do is study English grammar more. However, reading an article like this is beneficial, for it helps to catch certain useful ideas to develop my blog, that I may have never come accross in a “traditional grammar article”. ;)