Web Content: The Way We Write Now

by
David Pascal

The Old Rules No Longer Apply

The difference between good copywriters and bad ones is that good copywriters know what works.

Copywriters who are pros look at the studies. The way they write takes incorporates the facts about the way people read.

Professional copywriters know that in print advertising, most people look at images first, then headlines, then body copy. They know that 95% of print readers read only the headline. They know studies show white print on black gets only half as many readers as black print on white.

That's the kind of knowledge that produces copy that makes more sales.

When the internet as we know it started to develop in 1994, there were no studies anywhere about how the general population read on the net. It was all new. So at first businesses and writers assumed that the same rules applied.

They don't. Not at all.

Usability studies, led by the great work of Jakob Neilsen, have now given us hard data about how people read and react on the web.

And they give a totally new picture of how copywriters have to write if they're going to get maximum impact.

Online Readers Don't Read. They Scan.

Eye tracking studies show that internet and readers don't read every word you write in a linear fashion. Their eyes float over the screen looking for highlights: subheads, keywords, hyperlinks, buttons, phrases set apart in italics or boldface, bulleted lists, text set in boxes - these are integral elements in writing for the web. They are all that most people read.

How much is 'most'? 79 percent of test users in a Neilsen study always scanned any new page they came across. Only 16 percent read word-by-word.

Most readers will not read your copy at all. They will scan it, looking for items that interest them. And if you have no items for them to scan? Then they won't read anything at all.

Text Comes First

In print the eye moves immediately to images. Images come first, text comes second.

On the web - to everyone's amazement and the fury of a number of graphic designers - studies say that text comes first. The first thing people look at are the words. Sometimes they don't look at the pictures at all.

There are some interesting side observations about imagery. Flash continues to be the one of most hated elements on screen. 'Skip Intro' is the second-most pressed button on the web, and any wait for download time drives readership down massively.

On the other hand, eye tracking studies show that banner ads, which everyone claims to ignore, are in fact perceived by readers. Perception is brief - averaging one second - but that one second is long enough to register on the reader's consciousness.

But the main test result is uncompromising. People going to web sites look for text first once they get there.

Text is the most important element in getting readers to your web page. And text is the most important element keeping them there. It's the first, and sometimes the only, thing they see.

Readers Read For Content

As a general rule, viewing advertising is a passive experience. People don't seek it out. It appears, in a magazine, on a billboard. People don't go to advertisments for product information. If they're thinking about buying a product, they'll ask a friend about his experiences with it. Or talk to a sales clerk. Or -- check it out on the internet.

The internet is data-driven. It's an informational medium. People go there to find out things. They do not go there to listen to puffery or fluff. They want facts.

The strongest sites on the net are the ones rich in useful relevant information. The strongest copy on the net is copy that puts that information across.

Writing successful copy for the web means providing information about the product. And providing it as directly and as free of rhetoric as possible.

A bullet list of product specs will get more readership and product sales than any florid marketese, however beautifully written.

People online read for content.

Copy Has To Stand Alone

For people designing print ads, what you saw was what you got. The finished product was the same for every reader. And every element of that product worked together. In print, picture, typography, everything, led to a static fixed result. And everything there worked in combination for optimum effect.

That's gone. Web pages, email promotion, all of it can appear slightly to totally differently in each viewer's browser. Web browsers don't simply take a finished piece and show it to the reader as the designers imagined it. Browsers take the data they get and reconstruct something that may look nothing like what it started out as.

Images can be turned off to save download time. Typography can be doubled or tripled in size if the viewer has poor eyesight and has adjusted his standard type presentation accordingly. The viewer may be looking at your copy on a massive monitor running multiple screens simultaneously, or viewing it on a 44-inch WebTV, or seeing it on a postage-stamp-sized handheld device. The viewer may be blind and use a program that speaks the text aloud.

You can be fairly certain that in most cases browsers will be looking at an end product relatively close to what the web designer wanted. But you have no assurance.

The online copywriter has to work on the assumption that none of the visual elements intended to support his copy will do so. The copy you write has to be written so that it stands alone.

Writing For Search Engines

On the internet, readership is a function of linkage. If search engines don't list your page, it won't get read.

To get it listed, you need to be able to produce pages that contains enough keywords for the search engine to regard it as 'content-rich' and therefore worth listing.

How much copy? A rule of thumb says that a web page should contain at least 250 words for a search engine to deem it worthy of notice. And not just any words, but sentences rich with keywords - though not so rich that the search engine smells a deliberate attempt to get a high rating. In that case it bans you.

How many keywords are too many? It changes as the search engines and their algorithms change. Top current searchers now look for keywords in sentences that are grammatically well-formed, and keywords that make sense in terms of related words. So if 'Iraq' is written 'Iraq Iraq Iraq Iraq,' or 'Iraq' and 'Viagra' appear close together, the page is kicked off search returns for 'Iraq'.

Headlines Are Different

The most important part of any advertisement has traditionally been the headline. Headlines get more readership than any other text element. Headlines are remembered more than any other text element. Headlines are what jog the reader into reading the body copy.

But headlines on the internet have multiple functions. Your headline is generally what gets pulled out by search engines or used on link lists.

To write an effective headline you have to write a line that gets attention and interest in total isolation from the rest of your text. And that gets it in the context of dozens of similar keyword phrases headlines.

1. The headline should be an ultra-short abstract of the content of the ad. There's no space for teasers, for roundabout approaches, for wit. If your headline doesn't get to the point at once and describe what the article is about, it will lose readership.

2. The headline needs to be completely understandable out of context, and with no supporting data. It should be able to stand alone, with no help from body copy or from imagery.

3. The very first word, and the very first few words should characterize the subject, and be important. Don't use articles: starting headlines with 'The' gets them listed under 'T'!

4. The headline should be sixty characters max. Yes, that's right - think ten words of roughly six letters each. Any longer and the remainder will simply get chopped. If your meaning depends on that remainder, you're lost.

5. Words that have traditionally gotten the most response in print advertising - 'Announcing,' 'New,' 'Savings,' and the like, should be avoided on the web and ruthlessly stripped out in email. Anti-spam devices are geared to spot precisely those words and trash them and the accompanying copy before the reader ever sees them.

The new art of writing headlines on the web is the art of writing microcontent.

The copywriter can no longer focus on presenting only the most powerful benefit of using a product. He has to describe the product. He has ten or so words to do so. And that description has to carry the benefit.

Interactivity

In print, the main way that copywriters found out about public reaction to their copy was through subsequent sales. Those sales might not be in till months after the copy had been written. Sales remains the ultimate marker, but now reaction can be instantaneous. Send a mass emailing, and responses start arriving in minutes.

Moreover, those responses can instantly be taken into consideration. Useful criticisms can be incorporated at once. Pages can be revised the same day they were posted. In fact they should be, because responsiveness from the company is one of the high signs of public approval.

The corporate blog is one of the new areas of business writing. The consumers want to know what the producers and executives have to say, and they want to know it now. Not every executive is a polished and articulate writer, however, and so ghosted or semi-ghosted blogs are a rising phenomenon.

Interactivity has a negative face as well. Prior to the web, a disgruntled consumer might write an angry letter to the complaints department. Now an angry consumer can vent his anger all over cyberspace. And not only may that unhappy customer get more hits and attention than you, those criticisms stay available online forever.

On the internet, selling isn't a speech - it's a dialogue.

Entrance From Anywhere

In print reading, people start at the beginning, move through the middle, and go on through the end. The logical stages of an argument, of a presentation, of a process, are presented in the most appropriate way.

Not on the web. People don't progress in logical order. They scan. They leap away to other sites via hyperlinks. They enter your site from any page, not necessarily the home page, and they progress through it any way they please.

A reader may follow a link into your site and enter at a page devoted to a single one of your products or services. He may jump next to the Contact page. He may then decide to drop into the links page, and then maybe hop over to the Staff page, and then hop back to the Contact page, and then follow another link to some other site entirely.

How much of your site has this reader seen? Half? A third? What order has he seen it in? Even the reader may not remember.

Writing for the web means writing content that makes sense on its own, without supporting context. Because the reader can drop in at any point. And if the place he drops in makes no sense without logically prior earlier material, the reader gets confused and leaves. And you lose the reader.

Again: web copy has to stand alone. It's isn't merely that it has to work independently of the visuals or the surrounding imagery. It has to work independently of the surrounding pages.

Hyperlink Flight

The very definition of the internet is its ability to link to other computers and other sources of data. For the copywriter, this can be a good thing. If you make a claim about your product, the reader can click a provided link at once and confirm that your claim is true.

On the other hand, a reader can click to another site and never come back again.

Hyperlinks are good, mind you. There'd be no internet without them. They can get you credibility. They can link to other products or services you offer. You can swap links with other sites and that may send you prospects.

Or yours may go there. And never return.

There's no perfect solution to this, but the best solution to be very careful about who you link to in your copy. Links to sites with a high likelihood of reader loss should be minimized. And you should never place links in areas where you are making critical or major points.

Length Decay

In print advertising, the whole package is generally all there in your face. An ad in a magazine, in a newspaper, on a billboard, is completely there as a whole in front of you. You're exposed to every element of it.

But with web, you often have to either scroll or click from one page to a next to get the whole story.

And that produces a phenomenon I call 'length decay'. A lot of people will read that first screen. Some will scroll down and read another. A smaller number will scroll down for another screen of copy. A much smaller number will scroll down for a further screen.

In very short order your total readership reaches zero. And the same applies to copy that's spread over multiple pages. Lots of people will read the first page. Some will read the middle pages. Very few -- if any -- will read the last screen.

Web writers need to keep in mind the principle I think of as 'First Screen Last Screen'. The first screen your reader sees on the web is the last screen, in many cases.

It had better be damned good if you want to reader to read further. Or else designed so that it ends on a cliffhanger or on a broken sentence or an enticing line.

And even if so, smart copywriters should play it safe and always put the main things they need to say right up front at the top of the first page.

Start In The Center

Print readers start in the center and read down. Of course. That's how everyone reads everything, right?

Not on the web. According to studies, readers first look at the center of the screen, not the top.

And eye tracking studies say that the eye roves not down but to the next attention-catching chunk of text, whether below or to the left or right. The readers' eyes scan rather than read, and move to fix on text that is emphasized in some manner. The usual reading direction has nothing to do with it.

Is There A Single Best Way To Write For The Web?

There are ways to write copy for print advertisements perfectly. That is to say, there are guidelines in print copy that are so strongly supported that you can sit down and write business copy you know beyond question is strong.

There's no way to write perfect copy for the web. It changes too rapidly. Did anyone writing for the web in 1999 think their copy would be read aloud by machine readers or even podcast in 2006?

As technologies change and online reading habits continue to develop, there's simply no way to tell whether your business copy will be as good five years down the line as it is today.

But you can know the best way to write copy today. The best way is to stay right on top of the usability studies, and apply what they tell us about the way we read now.

-- David Pascal

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