Writing copy for the website
It’s time to write the copy for the website so that Jason can start to put the site together design-wise. It took us about two days to write the copy for the website and for the first half day we wrote nothing at all but looked at other sites, and thought about what our visitors would want to know. Good site copy is concise, short, to the point with absolutely no jargon, but it doesn’t start off like this. Getting your ideas down is the first hurdle. You can always smarten it up later with a few tricks stolen from the world of journalism.
As you know we have the logo and name already in place but we needed a strap to sit under the logo that tells the visitor in five or six words exactly what the product does. For instance, ‘Flickr - the best way to store, search, sort and share your photos.’ The strap should be short, to the point and leave people in no doubt what your service does and/or who it’s aimed at.
Once you have the strap pinned down things get much easier. Firstly, because you know who to aim your copy at tone-wise and secondly because you should begin to get a clearer idea of what information people will want to know next.
Try to suspend reality for one moment and imagine that you are not so immersed in the build of your new app that you know every nuance of its character. Imagine that you are your mum, and you have stumbled on a new site called Amigo that has a nice smiley face for a logo. Oooh! nice, tell me more… What does it do? (this is solved by the strap line). Sounds great. Now think - what’s your mum’s next question? It could be ‘how much is it?’ or ‘how does it work?’ or ‘how do I sign up?’ This will be specific to your app.
Of course your mum may not be your target audience so you have to be sensible when writing your copy from this point on. However, it’s useful to imagine that when your customers arrive at your site they will know as much about your app as your mum probably does right now, so make sure to explain everything in clear terms and second-guess the questions your visitors will be asking themselves.
Skype does this very well. The first box you see on Skype’s site is a huge green box that says: With Skype you can talk to anyone, anywhere, for FREE, forever’ - with the word free in caps on its own line. Why? Because when you land on the site and you start to understand that Skype is all about telephony, your next question is ‘aah but how much does it cost?’ Skype dissolves this barrier immediately by telling you it’s FREE. After that, most people are sold and so the next button you find is ‘download Skype’. For those who are not sold there is always the ‘learn more’ button.
In journalism college when they teach you how to structure a news story they tell you to use the ‘Who, What, Where, When, Why, How?’ test on your copy. Who did it, what did they do, where did they do it, when, why and how? A good news story will give you all these facts very quickly in the first paragraph and usually in this order (grab today’s newspaper and check it out, most still use this structure).
You can use this to double check that you have all the information your visitors require quickly accessible on the home page.
Who - who is the app aimed at?
What - what does it do?
Where - where do I sign-up?
Why - why should I use it?
How - how does it work? (edit: better still, How much?)
All this information should be on the first half of your home page.
It’s very important to keep your copy concise. People get bored if you go on and on so don’t use three words where one will suffice. The space on your home page is precious. Each pixel is marketing space that needs to work hard for its place. Don’t use phrases that are vague, can be misconstrued or include jargon. Jargon in particular will alienate your potential users. You may know that your ‘Ajax-driven’ interface is kick-ass but your customers don’t care. Leave it out.
Trim your sentences to get your message across in the quickest way possible. Adding more words doesn’t make you sound clever and it certainly doesn’t make your app better so again leave them out. A couple of examples of this are:
What you write - What you should write
At the present time - Now
Provided that - If
Owing to the fact that - Because
In order to - To
The majority of - Most
Accordingly - So
Facilitate - Help
Frequently - Often
Commence - Start
Nonetheless - But
In conjunction with - And
And you can pretty much delete the following words from your copy altogether because they don’t mean anything:
at the end of the day
basically
by and large
currently
simply
well
If you want to learn more about writing tight, snappy copy then try reading ‘English for Journalists’ by Wynford Hicks.
Your copy doesn’t have to be in a highly-polished state to hand over to your designer. But it does need to have the main messages in place. You also need to prioritize the information so that your designer can see what’s important and what is less so.
Like this article? Digg it!
Excellent advice.
You might also like the Plain English Campaign’s The A to Z of alternative words at http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/A-Z.html
There’s also plenty of articles on effective web writing on my own site: http://textgoeshere.org.uk
One item you could possibly add to your list of who, where, what etc. is… “how much?” :)
Comment by Dave Nolan — May 9, 2006 @ 8:51 am
Thanks Dave - you’re right. The how part should be ‘How much’ that’s always the next question!
Comment by Gillian Carson — May 9, 2006 @ 8:58 am
Ya’ll completely stole my idea. I was going to do this for my app. :) Awesome stuff. This is all really interesting.
Comment by Garrett Dimon — May 9, 2006 @ 4:12 pm
Great sequence you have going here. My only question is, what impact does concise copy have on search results? In a world where every market appears saturated with “the best” provider of any service or product, how does concise help? Type anything into google, and you’ll get (typically) hundreds of hits. The only hope of some is that they will refine their search with additional words that they may contain in their pages. My thoughts are unrefined, as I just started thinking of this after reading your site. Just wondering if you had a comment on it at all.
Comment by Matt S — May 9, 2006 @ 4:49 pm
I’d hate to think that people were adding words to their site copy just to get indexed by Google! That would be truly awful. Writing your copy with one eye on potential search keywords is smart - but the golden rule still stands. Don’t waffle!
Comment by Gillian Carson — May 9, 2006 @ 5:23 pm
Some great tips all round. I’m about to embark on this for my own app, so your advice is very much appreciated.
Also check out http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk - their copywriter is ridiculously talented, and the tone he sets is bang on. I now buy their drinks just to read the labels!
Really enjoying the video diary too. I’m eagerly anticipating the introduction of a mysterious Geordie narrator, accompanied by hidden-camera style action. (”Day 43 in the Carson Systems house. Gillian is attacking Ryan with a semi-automatic stapler.”)
And where’s the product placement and cross-promotion of your other projects? Your cat is prime advertising territory! An appropriately-placed DropSend logo would provide a moving feline-based promo to rival any primetime tv slot.
Keep up the great work.
Comment by Nick — May 9, 2006 @ 9:39 pm
Common search/retrieval algorithms base the rank of a document for a specific search term on relative frequency. If the same term appears two times in different documents the one with the fewest other words would get the highest rank (from that part of the algorithm). So concise writing actually has the possibility to increase search rank.
Don’t know anything specific about Google, though.
Comment by Daniel — May 10, 2006 @ 6:47 am
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Pingback by outbreak » Writing for web (written on May 10th, 2006 by Marko Mrdjenovic) — May 10, 2006 @ 7:38 am
“mysterious Geordie narrator, accompanied by hidden-camera style action.”
ha ha Big Brother - is that actually still on TV?
Comment by Gillian Carson — May 10, 2006 @ 11:08 am
Thanks for the info Daniel - I must admit I know virtually nothing about how Google finds pages so any info is news to me. But it’s good to hear that concise copy might actually help in other ways as well as make your visitors less frustrated.
Comment by Gillian Carson — May 10, 2006 @ 11:10 am
Thank you as well Daniel. I’ve read up a bit and find evidence to support your theory. Very cool, and very refreshing to hear! [begins editing pages]
Comment by Matt S — May 10, 2006 @ 2:01 pm
[…] Update 5/10: Here’s some more specific copy tips by web-application builders at Bare Naked App Posted May 9, 2006 in Web Applications, Communication with 0 comments « Simplified Project Management Jon Tester’s Good Buzz » […]
Pingback by Simplified Media » The Importance of Words in Web 2.0 — May 10, 2006 @ 10:22 pm
Great article! I’m always hungry for ways to improve my writing and this post nails it on the head.
From what I know, the Googlebot comes and hits your site from the top left bits and crawls through to the bottom right bits. The closer the words to the top left bits the more relevant they’re deemed.
So are words in headers, bold, italics, that are hyperlinks. There’s a certain percentage too for keywords that are repeated that help you gain ranking but if you overshoot that percentage it’s assumed to be spam.
My 2 SEO cents :)
Comment by Alvin — May 11, 2006 @ 2:53 am
Thanks Alvin - good info. We will be keeping that in mind when we do the next re-write of the Amigo copy.
Comment by Gillian Carson — May 12, 2006 @ 1:07 pm
[…] Found this interesting article. I’m posting this so I can keep it for later. Its a good little piece of information on writing website copies. http://www.barenakedapp.com/the-text/writing-copy-for-the-website Heres a little sample: […]
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Pingback by MindAmp » Blog Archive » Bare Naked App — May 13, 2006 @ 3:05 am
Some of these information provided by you is pretty cool. I think I might have load of redundant words in my website. I guess, it’s time for me to do some spring-cleaning.
Comment by Keith — May 13, 2006 @ 10:46 am
Cleaning up the copy is something I need to learn to do in my own web writing. It seems like I use excessive wording a little too often. Thanks for the great tips.
Comment by Nick — May 13, 2006 @ 1:07 pm
While you have the right idea here, you are missing one of the most important key elements of good content writing: editing.
You have made so many grammatical errors in this article, that it’s difficult to try and take your seriously.
for instance in “As you know we have the logo and name already in place but we needed a strap”:
- “As you know” is a redundant term
- “Have” should be “Had” or “Needed” should be “Need”
- “Strap” is not a term that most of the global market is familiar with.
Go back, look at your mistakes and try again. This is just one instance that I found. There are more.
Comment by John — May 13, 2006 @ 3:22 pm
Great article. I plan to use your advice on my new site:
One minor formatting peeve: I prefer the breadcrumb navigation on the page instead of in the title because
A) Breadcrumb turns bookmarks into rubbish. Only the article title should be in the
B) I can breadcrums links to navigate site hierarchy.
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Hi John,
Thanks for your feedback. I agree, editing is the most important stage in writing copy for your new web app. As I said:
“Getting your ideas down is the first hurdle. You can always smarten it up later.”
As for your other comments I think you’ve missed the point. The feature is about writing tight copy in order to explain what your web app does. I wouldn’t attempt to put those constraints on other types of writing (such as blog posts, novels, essays etc). Literature and life would be very dull if everyone was concise in everything they wrote.
And we certainly don’t guarantee that our blog posts on BNA will be perfect - they are a stream of consciousness and there is no time for ’smartening up’ here. We have a web app to build you know :)
Comment by Gillian Carson — May 15, 2006 @ 8:36 am
[…] Interesting sites found this week: How to write copy for Websites Screen shots of Firefox Alpha 2 Signs your a crappy developer This is a nice little use of AJax and Google maps, visual mapping site… kinda cool. Categorized: Fun Stuff […]
Pingback by Francis’ Weblog » BBC Interviewing a … “technology expert” or is it a cabbie? — May 15, 2006 @ 11:20 am
Great entry! Way too many sites underestimate the power of great type.
Comment by Olav — May 16, 2006 @ 4:20 pm
[…] Update: For some practical tips for writing short, concise, to-the-point copy for your website or web app check out Bare Naked App’s Writing copy for the website. This article will helps you get you ideas down on paper, or on the screen, and smarten them up with a few tricks stolen from the world of journalism. […]
Pingback by BlueSparc design, technology news » Blog Archive » Writing is Part of the Design Experience — May 16, 2006 @ 8:26 pm
um… john’s grammatical corrections are incorrect and he made a grammatical error of his own. if you’re going to be stupid enough to correct someone’s grammar in a public forum, be smart enough not to get caught making the same stupid mistakes yourself in the course of your correction.
Comment by webgoddess — May 16, 2006 @ 10:45 pm
[…] How to write for the web. It is a challenge everyday for me. Ultimately what ends up on-line is a rough 1st or second draft. So, for me anyway rather then try and be a great essayist and devote time I just do not have, I'm trying to take a kind of casual news story approach. I found this site useful, Bare Naked App. While the advice is directed toward someone that is writing about a software application or web service much of the guidelines offered would also apply to most blog posts. In journalism college when they teach you how to structure a news story they tell you to use the ‘Who, What, Where, When, Why, How?’ test on your copy. Who did it, what did they do, where did they do it, when, why and how? A good news story will give you all these facts very quickly in the first paragraph and usually in this order (grab today’s newspaper and check it out, most still use this structure). […]
Pingback by inkbluesky » Blog Archive » butterfly “89″, writing for the web, a better phone company, hope for nerve damage — May 18, 2006 @ 1:51 pm
[…] Este artículo en Bare Naked App inspiró esta adaptación. […]
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Writing copy for websites…
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[…] It’s time to write content for your website, how do you get started ? I came across this blog article by Gillian Carson of CARSON Systems His ideas, paraphrased below, hit the nail on the head. The problem: What to write, and how to write it ? A. For some period of time, like a half day, write nothing at all but look at other sites, and think about what do your visitors want to know. Good site content is concise, short, to the point with absolutely no jargon, but do not expect it to start off like this. B. Get your ideas down first, the content can be tightened up later. C. Create a short sentence that tells the visitor in five or six words exactly what the site is for, or the product does. The sentence or “strap” should be short, to the point and leave people in no doubt what your service does and/or who it’s aimed at. Once you have the strap pinned down things get much easier. Firstly, because you know who to aim your copy at tone-wise and secondly because you should begin to get a clearer idea of what information people will want to know next. D. Try to step away from your immediate reality for a moment, and become a new visitor to the site, which has a nice “strap” line , and perhaps a logo. a. “Oooh! nice, tell me more…” i. What does it do? (If this is solved by the “strap” line)… Sounds great. Now think - what’s your next question? ii. It could be ‘how much is it?’ iii. Or, ‘how does it work?’ , iv. or ‘how do I sign up?’ E. Of course try to you may not be your target audience so you have to be sensible when writing your copy from this point on. It’s useful to imagine that when your customers arrive at your site they will know as much about your app as your mom probably does right now, so make sure to explain everything in clear terms. H. Gillian Carson uses his site, Skype, which follows these principals very well. I. In school, when taught how to structure writing, you are told to use the ‘Who, What, Where, When, Why, How?’ test . a. Who did it? b. What did they do? c. Where did they do it? d. When? e. Why? f. How? g. J. A good news story will give you all these facts very quickly in the first paragraph and usually in this order. K. L. Use the same technique to double check the content your visitors require. Who - who is the web site aimed at? What - what does it do? Where - where do I sign-up? Why - why should I use it? How - how does it work? (edit: better still, How much?) All this information should be on the first half of the home page. It’s very important to keep your message concise. People get bored if you go on and on. o Use the fewest words that will suffice. o The space on your home page is precious. Each pixel is marketing space that needs to work hard for its place. Don’t use phrases that are vague, can be misconstrued or include jargon. Jargon in particular will alienate your potential users. You may know that your ‘Ajax-driven’ interface is kick-ass but your customers don’t care. Leave it out. Trim your sentences to get your message across in the quickest way possible. Adding more words doesn’t help the reader. A couple of examples of this are: What you write - What you should write At the present time - Now Provided that - If Owing to the fact that - Because In order to - To The majority of - Most Accordingly - So Facilitate - Help Frequently - Often Commence - Start Nonetheless - But In conjunction with - And And you can pretty much delete the following words from your copy altogether because they don’t mean anything: at the end of the day basically by and large currently simply well Gillian Carson suggests the book, ‘English for Journalists’ by Wynford Hicks. Best Regards: SteveB. Gillian Carson’s article can be found on Bare Naked App. […]
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