Copywriting for the Web

Copywriting is the business of writing effective text for a particular medium and purpose. Requirements vary according to the medium (radio, television, magazines, newspapers, the web) and the purpose (selling products, soliciting donations, communicating information, providing entertainment).

Everyone on our staff has professional writing experience. In addition, we partner with copywriter Sonya MacDonald, who is skilled at copywriting for search engine optimization.

There are two things to remember when creating content for the web.

• Visitors are impatient and there are literally millions of other web pages they could be visiting. At any moment, they are one click of the mouse away from leaving your site. You want to give them the information they are looking for before they leave.
• The web is interactive - like a conversation between two people. Visitors want answers to specific questions. They don't want to slog through pages of copy to find the answer. The structure of your content should let them find their answer and skip the rest.

Some tips for good web copy:

• Keep it as short as possible without compromising meaning.
• Focus on your visitor's goals, not your organization's goals. (Presumably, there's some overlap. If not, you'll need more than good copy to solve the problem.)
• Use "you" and "your" much more than "we" or "our".
• Break information into "chunks", which are distributed across multiple pages or separated by headings.
• Choose headings which are meaningful and relevant to the content below. Well chosen headings enable visitors to locate the information they are interested in more quickly and skip the information they are not interested in.
• Choose your words to be accessible for your audience. If you're selling technical gadgets to a non-technical audience, use non-technical language. If you're targeting ESL speakers or those who have difficulty reading, choose more commonly used words.
• Check your content carefully for typographical and grammatical errors.