Mickie Kennedy is the CEO and founder of
eReleases and blogs at
PR Fuel. He offers quick tips for attracting vistors to your website - and keeping them coming back with his "10 commandments for writing web content" and "7 things that annoy website visitors."
The 10 commandments of writing Web content
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Writing content for the Web is completely different from writing content for print consumption. People read differently on a computer screen than they do on a piece of paper. Not only do computer monitors make it difficult to read for long periods of time, but people who use the Web tend to be especially impatient, looking for the information they want as quickly as possible.
With all of this in mind, I’ve come up with a list of 10 commandments for writing Web content. Whether you’re writing a blog post, sales copy for your website, or a press release for online distribution, you should always keep these rules in mind.
1. Keep your headlines clear and catchy.
The headline is often times the only thing a reader will first see from your Web content. Maybe they came across a link to a blog post on their Twitter feed, or maybe they’re viewing your headline in the search engine results. Your headline needs to be clear, memorable, and to the point. Put the most important information at the lead of the headline.
2. Get to the point.
Web users typically give a new website eight seconds to capture their attention. If they can’t find what they’re looking for by then, they back out of the site. This means you need to get right to the point in your Web content. No long, meandering intros. Cut to the chase so the reader knows he’s in the right place.
3. Link to resources for further information.
It’s always a good idea to include links within your content. This is a good way to help readers get more information on a particular subject, and keeps them moving forward on your website.
4. Keep paragraphs to a few short sentences.
Online readers are easily overwhelmed. Whenever they see a huge block of text, they usually get scared away. Keep your paragraphs to just a few short sentences so that it’s easy to scan.
5. Use bullet points and numbered lists.
People tend to scan content online rather than read it word for word. By using bulleted or numbered lists, you help to make your content quick and easy to scan. Consider this post. If you wanted to, you could scan over it in maybe 15 seconds and get the key information from it.
6. Include subheads to break things up.
Subheads are useful for making your content easier to scan, and they help to keep your copy more organized.
7. Optimize your content for relevant keywords.
No matter what type of Web content you’re writing, you need to remember that it’s going to be indexed by the search engines. The more search traffic you can drive to it, the better. So, always optimize your content for the right keywords.
8. Write like you talk.
The Web tends to be a more conversational, less formal medium of sharing information than most print communication. With that in mind, it’s important that you write content that has a personality and engages the reader. Simply put, just write like you talk. No need to try to dress your content up or make it more complicated than it needs to be.
9. Double check everything.
Whenever you put something online, it’s going to be up there forever. The Internet has a long memory. So before you publish anything, double check the facts, and make sure there aren’t any typos.
10. Encourage feedback.
The Internet is all about interaction. Now, readers have just as much of a voice as the authors. And that’s a good thing. Just make sure you’re encouraging your readers to give feedback.
7 things that annoy website visitors
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If you want to build a successful online presence, you need to have a fine-tuned website that brings visitors in and gets them to take action once on your site. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to have the first part down (getting traffic), but when it comes to actually converting visitors into customers, they fail miserably.
That’s because a lot of websites are annoying. They drive visitors away almost as quickly as they arrive. To add insult to injury, the frustrated visitors usually end up going to a competitor’s website to get their needs taken care of.
Here are 7 things that annoy website visitors.
1. Slow loading times – I’ve seen studies that say internet users
give a website 8 seconds to grab their attention. If it doesn’t satisfy them during that short time period, they’ll back out and go elsewhere. People are impatient. That’s why it’s so important to have a fast loading website.
Here’s a good post with tips for increasing website loading speed.
2. Autoplay music or video – Seriously, this isn’t 1998. If your website starts playing music or video as soon as someone lands on it, you can bet more people than not will leave. It’s intrusive and annoying. Give visitors the option of playing the music or video. Don’t force it on them.
3. Cluttered layouts – Have you ever walked into a messy room and tried to find something? It’s overwhelming, right? The same thing goes for a cluttered website layout. If every single space on your website is filled, you’re going to overwhelm visitors and make it too difficult for them to use your site. Remember, less is usually more, and white space is your friend.
4. Poor navigation – Internet users have grown accustomed to using websites in a specific manner. They expect the navigation to be along the top or left-hand side of the page. They expect the navigation to be clear and the website to be organized in a logical manner. Don’t try to change this up. Keep it simple.
5. Forced registration – Look, I understand you want to collect data for marketing purposes from your visitors. But there’s nothing more frustrating than forcing visitors to register before they can take certain actions. Most people don’t like giving out a lot of their personal information, so you’re only going to drive them away by doing this.
6. No contact information – Your visitors shouldn’t have any problems getting in touch with you. You should have a dedicated contact page on your website, contact forms throughout, and you can even post your phone number or other contact info on each page of your website.
7. Too much Flash – There’s nothing wrong with having some minor Flash elements in your website, but when your entire site is based in Flash, you’re going to have some problems. First, you’re losing most mobile internet users. And then you run into problems with simple usability issues like bookmarking pages, clicking the back button, etc.