1. Know your audience
2. Follow the “inverted pyramid” model
Web readers have short attention spans—they’ll decide whether your site has the information they need in seconds. Structure your content like an upside-down pyramid or cone. The most important messages go at the top of the page. Then, gradually drill down to the more specific, supporting information. End with tangential details.
For example, say you’re creating a webpage about a conference. The most pertinent details—a description of the theme, date, and location—would appear at the top of the page. Supporting details like speakers and their lecture topics would follow. The less important information—such as conference organizers, the history of the conference series or a list of related resources—would appear at the bottom of the page.
3. Write short, simple sentences
4. Stick to active voice
Use active rather than passive verbs, and specify the subject of the sentence. For example, rather than writing “A coffee was ordered,” write “The man ordered a coffee.” Instead of saying “Products can be ordered on our website,” say “You can order products on our website.”
5. Show, don’t tell
Don’t limit your prose to generalities and high-level statements. Specific, real-world examples help readers better understand and visualize your messages. Consider these two descriptions:
This is the best dog toy money can buy.
Or
We made the “Rough Rover” dog toy from durable, 100 percent natural rubber, designed to resist punctures and tears from even the most dedicated of chewers.
5. Nix the jargon
The web is for everyone—not just technical experts. So make sure information is understandable for the educated non-specialist. Spell out acronyms on first reference. Avoid insider language. Explain complex or niche terms. And provide hyperlinks to other articles where readers can get more background information on a particular topic.
Consider this sentence:
The journalist grabbed a SOT from the MOS, drove back to the station and put the story in the can.
Many of these terms are comprehensible only to broadcast journalists. A reader-friendly revision would be:
The journalist interviewed a bystander about the incident, and recorded her statement to include in the story.
This tip is especially important if you work in a technical industry, but want your website to attract non-expert customers. Remember that you need to write for your audience (see point #1) and not for your colleagues. Using accessible language will help you come across as approachable and open—just what you want to convey to future customers
6. Mix up your word choice
Words are like cookies—we all have our favorites. But when it comes to keeping your visitors interested, variety is key! Word clouds are fun to use and can help you vary your world choice by visualizing which words you use the most. Just copy and paste your text into a free word cloud tool like this one to generate your cloud. The more you use a word, the bigger it will look in your cloud. Have you overused a certain word? Type it into Thesaurus.com to find new synonyms to enhance your text.
Negative words standing out in your cloud? Now you know exactly what to tweak for a more positive tone. Keep an eye out for your website keywords as well: these should appear several times in your text, so it should be easy to recognize them in a word cloud
7. Incorporate multimedia
Sometimes a picture—or infographic or video—really is worth a thousand words. Research shows that 90 percent of the information transmitted to the human brain is visual, and people process visual information 60,000 times faster than text. An easy-to-read chart or graph can also do a better job of explaining a complex topic than text alone. If you’re not a graphic designer by trade, there are lots of ways to use visuals on your website and some great services out there to help you make graphics yourself, like Canva and Piktochart.