Writing for the Web
The first thing to know about writing for the web is that reading on the web is different.
A website isn鈥檛 a book, brochure or filing cabinet 鈥� something you peruse, leaf through or rummage about in. It has more in common with a help desk or customer service line. People use the web to get answers to questions and get things done. Web users are mission-minded, and they鈥檙e in a hurry.
We don鈥檛 read pages. We scan them.
Why? Because we鈥檙e hunting for something specific. We don鈥檛 like to waste time, and scanning is easy.
We don鈥檛 weigh all of our options. We jump to act.
Why? Because it鈥檚 faster, and we trust our gut. We tend to choose the first option that seems reasonable to us
Every principle of writing for the web is based on these simple facts and can be boiled down to a single sentence:
Don鈥檛 make people think.
Web content (what is there and what can be done with it) should be self-evident. People should 鈥済et it鈥� at a glance without expending any effort thinking about it.
This isn鈥檛 about dumbing things down. It鈥檚 about respecting our audience enough to make everything easy to understand.
In other words, writing for the web is about making things easy for our audience to find what they need and understand what they鈥檝e found.
Good web writing is:
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