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Effective web content is a key component of a high-functioning website. Regardless of site design or high-quality photography, without well-written content, your website will not perform at its fullest potential.
The web content specialist at Student Affairs IT, Caitlyn Walsh, would like to assist content authors and web administrators within the division of Student Affairs better understand the nebulous world of writing for the web.
The University of Montana has a broad audience. The pages within the division of Student Affairs may target potential or current students, who may be as young as 16 or 17, as well as non-traditional students, parents and faculty/staff.
It is therefore very important that our websites have an appropriate tone. According to a study performed by the Nielsen Norman Group, college students are more critical of a website’s tone than older users.
college students are more critical of a website’s tone than older users. Students were quick to criticize sites which sounded too formal, juvenile, or disingenuous.
Sites should avoid a marketing or pandering tone, and be cautious of “talking down” to users. Keeping your writing short, to the point, and professional is often the best strategy.
According to eye-tracking studies, users of websites do not read every word on the page. They instead skim the page for the most important or applicable information, following an F-pattern.
The picture at the right shows an example of an eye-tracking study. You can clearly see that the eye spends the most time focusing on the top left of the website and concentration falls off as you move to the right
and down the page. Place your content at the top and left of the page to increase visibility.
As a content author, it is your job to write in a way that facilitates user skimming. Using lists and short paragraphs keeps users focused on the important information. Lists, generally prefaced by a two
to three word phrase and a colon followed by bulleted or numbered items, help users determine quickly if the information is relevant. Using short paragraphs also facilitates this method.
Make sure to put the most important keywords at the beginning of the paragraph. Bolding keywords in the middle of lists and paragraphs also helps make scanning easier on the user.
The inverted pyramid, in conjunction with short paragraphs, helps users quickly find the information they’re looking for. By putting the most important information at the top of the paragraph,
users can read a sentence and determine if the paragraph is relevant. If not, they can skip to the next text block and try again. If the important information is buried in the middle of the paragraph, users may skip potentially important information.
As you can see, writing in the inverted pyramid style more closely fits the reading style of users demonstrated in the F-pattern eye-tracking studies.
The University of Montana requires all University websites comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, as well as Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act as amended by the Workforce Investment Act of 1998,
the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Montana Code Annotated section 18-5-601. This means that all University websites must be accessible to all persons with disabilities.
Key strategies to comply with these laws include providing alt, or alternative, text for all photographs, which provide an accurate description of the image. All charts and tables must also have a description of the data contained within.
Link text can also provide potential pitfalls for accessibility. Some users may have accessibility software called screenreaders that read the text on the page.
Link text, or content that is hyperlinked to another page, must have an accurate description of the linked page that makes sense out of the context of the surrounding paragraph. Users may not know where the link will take them.
For example, “click here for more information” should be avoided. Instead, try something like “go to our home page for more information.” Home page would be the key hyperlinked words.
The University of Montana also requires that all videos must have captions or text transcripts for all audio provided in the video.
Content on University of Montana websites should also follow basic style guidelines for tone and increased readability. When text is meant to be emphasized, consider using a bold font, rather than italicizing, underlining, or using all caps letters.
Web writing frequently uses bolded text differently than print. For instance, in the sentence “It is important that you sign your letter”, the words “sign your letter” would be best bolded instead of “It is important that you”.
This makes it easier for users who are quickly scanning documents to notice the instructions. Users traditionally expect underlined text to be hyperlinked, and this may cause confusion if underlining is used to provide emphasis.
Extensive uppercase text as well as italics are more difficult to read, and may present readability problems. Stylistically, content on University websites should be written in a formal, non-pandering or marketing tone.
This tone generally calls for simple punctuation. Occasionally, it may be contextually accurate to use a question mark, or more rarely, an exclamation point, but multiple punctuation marks should be avoided.
When writing for the web, it is important to use the active voice. This rule of grammar is confusing to many, so here’s a good way to remember the difference: In the active voice, the subject of the sentence is doing the action.
In the passive voice, the action is being done to the subject. Here’s a good rule of thumb for testing your sentences. If you can add the phrase “by zombies” to the end, your sentence is in the passive voice.
For example: the title of this slide is “write web content in the active voice.” This sentence is also in the active voice. If we were to change the syntax of the sentence, however, to be “web content should be written in the active voice”
we can add “by zombies” to the end and it will still make sense. “Web content should be written in the active voice by zombies.”
The best way to increase the visibility of your website is to ensure your content is optimized for the web. Avoiding clever headlines is the first component of optimized content: most users will find your site via a search engine like Google or Bing.
They will not be looking for a clever way to search for your information, and if the headings on your page do not contain keywords or a straightforward description of the information on your page, users may miss your content.
Keywords should also be found in the body of your content. Using keywords effectively means including words that relate to your content or overarching idea of the page, and that each page has a unique and limited set of targeted keywords.
Search engines also weight the page title and headings of your website more heavily than paragraph text. Inside the Cascade CMS, you have the option of headings one through six.
These headings are weighted differently by search engines, and should only be used as, for example, chapters in a textbook. They give the main idea of the following paragraph in a two- to three-word phrase.
Headings should also be used sequentially. Do not follow a heading three by a heading two within the same list. They should also not be used to make text stand out or have emphasis. If it wouldn’t make sense in a table of contents, it shouldn’t be a head.
Please feel free to contact Student Affairs IT if you have any questions or concerns about your website’s content. We are available Monday through Friday, eight a.m. to five p.m. via phone.
Our phone number is 406 243 2008, or email saprogrammers@mso.umt.edu. Thank you.