Jeremy Hurst, MD of Slightly Different - one of the country's leading web design companies - talks about the unique challenges of writing for the web.
Writing for the Internet isn’t the same as writing for a newspaper or a magazine. It’s a different art, something Jeremy knows only too well. “It’s not like writing for a static medium. You can modify something easily on the web. You can display things in many different ways. And it’s not just about text. It’s about the way the text looks, the way that text comes over.”
In the Beginning
It all starts with the client and ‘a vision’. “The client will always have an idea in mind. They will say about a million words to you and you’ve got to take out the five or six that are really key. Boil it down to a maximum of ten words. That is what they really want to achieve. If you can do that, you’ll have a very happy client.”
One of the best ways to get to know what your client is really about is to meet with them. “It’s always worth going to see people. Speak to the staff; they can often give you a completely different angle. It’s always important to get a different perspective.”
And always try to get a written brief, something you can refer back to, which will help keep you focused.
Research, research, research
One thing that is often underestimated is the value of research. “Copywriting for websites is 70 per cent research and 30 per cent writing,” says Caroline Bradbury, Slightly Different’s in-house editor. Certainly, the better you know about your market, the better you can write about it. It is also important to identify the market accurately. “We had a client who said that their market was the 18-30 market,” says Jeremy. “But the research we did suggested that actually, they made most of their money from 18 to 22-year-old groups of men. It totally changed the way they marketed themselves.” That’s just one way you can give yourself that extra edge and give your client the ‘wow factor’ that will have them coming back for more and, as Jeremy says, “that’s what reputations are built on.”
The Look of it
Of course websites are more than just copy. “If the site doesn’t look right then they’ll move on. Once they’ve got the look and feel of the site then they will look at the language and then at what’s written on the site.” That’s why it’s a good idea to meet with the designer and make sure that you’re singing from the same sheet. “Two minds are greater than one. Your input is valuable, don’t ever be put off by thinking you’re just writing the copy. If you think there’s a better way of writing that copy or getting the development team to design the site, then say it.”
Keeping it Brief
The attention spans of Internet readers aren’t known for their longevity, so for e-commerce it’s crucial that you grasp your reader’s attention straight away. “People aren’t going to read thousands of words. They might read 20, if you’re lucky, then they’ll skip to the next page.”
But that’s not the only reason to keep it short. Long text does not sit well with Google, Yahoo and the other search engines. In their search rankings they can penalise sites for being too text-heavy, and what’s the point of having a site if no one can find it? “Three to five hundred words is the optimum amount per page for search engines, although not necessarily for the public.”
Getting noticed
Jeremy admits that getting your website noticed is ‘school boy stuff’. “Page titles are very important. If the title contains the name of the product then it’s got a much higher chance of being picked up for the product. If it just contains the name of the client, it won’t.”
Key phrases are another important aspect. “Say there are 300 words on that page and there are three words that make up a key phrase on that page, you’ve got a ratio of one percent, three out of three hundred. If you’ve got a ratio of around five percent, that’s better for search engines. Repeat that phrase five times and the search engine will really like it.”
“Google looks for text headers, they are the h1 and h2 of your page. All these points on the page will add to the importance of that page as far as Google is concerned. If you’ve got ticks in all these boxes there’s a really good chance the site is not going to require serious search engine optimisation.”
And when you’re done
Writing for the web has some real advantages over other forms of writing. “Always get feedback. Always try and improve it. That’s the nice thing about the web. You can always make it better. You can always try new things and modify it, as opposed to a printed brochure that you’ve just written for which they’ve had 50,000 copies run off. They’re not going to reprint that.”
