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Know the 10 Cs of great web
content
Artisan Content's articles are
written for non-technical people who manage web content. The 10
Cs of great content will help keep your site looking good, functioning
well, and satisfying your visitors.
#1:
Clear
Be sure your site's navigation
is easy to follow and content is well organized and easy to find.
Survey after survey show what people want most from websites
is quick access to information. "Web users are getting more
ruthless and selfish when they go online, reveals research...
Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach
a site quickly, complete a task and leave,"
according to web guru Jacob Nielsen, as
reported by the BBC.
So how can you give these
ruthless web surfers what they want?
- Simple, clear navigation
that is consistent throughout your site. Never move navigation
around from page to page.
- Strive for a navigation
system that allows users to go from any page in your site to
any other page in as few clicks as possible (one, hopefully).
- Always name your navigation
buttons and links with the clearest, most direct language possible.
Navigation is not the place to be clever.
- Mark the subject of
pages and text with clear headlines and subheads. Don't keep
people guessing about what the content is about.
- Employ every means
possible to help visitors find the content they are looking
for as quickly and easily as possible, including a good site
search feature and a site map page.
#2:
Concise
The famous quote, "If
I had more time, I would have written less," is attributed
to Mark Twain and Blaise Pascal, among
others. Whoever said it, the point is clear — it takes
time to edit copy to the essentials and improve the quality of
the communication. As a rule people do not read web pages as
thoroughly as they read printed materials — they scan.
Because of that, you must write for the web in scannable blocks.
- Break up blocks of text more
frequently online than in print, using headlines and subheads.
- Don't cover more than one
topic in a paragraph.
- Change paragraphs into numbered
or bulleted lists to help readers scan text quickly.
- Break up text with graphics.
- Use photos and illustrations
with brief captions, rather then large blocks of text.
Read
in-depth about writing for the web.
#3: Clean
Clutter is the enemy.
To give people what they want — quick access to the information
they are seeking, which means they want to cut through the
clutter. That means you need to cut out the clutter.
Look at every page on your website. Are there extraneous elements?
Delete them. Is there unnecessary text? Edit it. Are there more
images than are needed? Out with them. Every page should have
one theme, and everything on that page should support it. If
it doesn't it should go.
#4:
Cohesive
Websites should follow
the tenants of good graphic design. Page templates, text styles,
design elements like photography and illustrations, color palettes,
and all other content should be handled consistently throughout
the site.
- Don't use more than one or
two font families site-wide.
- Keep headline, subhead and
body copy text sizes uniform on each page and from page to page.
- Develop a color palette and
stick with it.
- Use the same photography
or illustration style throughout your site.
- Make sure all pages follow
consistent templates.
- Place navigation consistently,
as explained in C1.
#5:
Complete
Yes, it's very important
to cut the fat from your website. But there is always a danger
of cutting too deep, or in some other way failing to deliver
the content your site visitors are looking for. The most obvious
are things that are literally missing: missing images, missing
text, missing pages. But how do you get beyond the obviously
missing content? Well it's tough to know what your audience is
looking for without asking them.
- Add comments forms on appropriate
pages on your site to gather visitor input. Ask them what they
were looking for and whether your website delivered.
- Survey your site visitors.
What better way to know what they want than to ask them. There
are several good, inexpensive (even free) online survey tools.
Use one to send a survey to emails you gather from subscribers
or customers on your site (be sure they have opted in to such
emails, however).
Conduct hands-on testing with
your target audience. This is called usability testing, and can
be done formally by professional usability testing experts, or
informally by you. Formal, comprehensive usability testing uncovers
much more than just missing, unclear or superfluous content, it
tells you if your site navigation is effective, and if all the
bells and whistles on your site are working for people the way
you want them to. Such testing gives you rich information on the
experience web surfers have upon visiting your site. Even though
functionality is tested, content is still often a main focus of
usability testing, since content is what matters!
Hiring a professional research
firm can be expensive, and it may be a waste of time and money.
As an alterative, you can conduct your own informal usability testing.
According to web guru Jakob Nielsen, you only need five
people to test your site. After you find five people representative
of your target audience, follow the guidelines in
this article from Contented.
#6:
Call to Action
You must be sure it is
unmistakably obvious what you want the readers to do, and them
tell them to do it. A call to action (CTA) has long been touted
as the one absolute necessity in any marketing communication
or advertising message. It is even more important online to be
sure you make it clear what you want your audience to do.
- If you want them to
call you, place your phone number prominently on every page.
- If you want them to
place an order, create a button that say "Order Now." Buttons
are proven to get more clicks than text links when you want
online users to take action.
- If you want them to fill
out a form, ask the to please do it now.
You should always give your
site visitor a clear idea of what will happen next if they take
the action you are requesting. For example, next to a "Order
Now" button you should say either, "You will have an
opportunity to review order details before submitting,"
or, "Order will be placed when you click this button." Put
yourself in the visitor's shoes and let them know what's coming — if
you keep them guessing they may fail to act altogether.
#7:
Clickable
Amazingly, there are websites
that actually hide the existence of hyperlinks in text simply
because of the text formatting used. Don't format your text links
to be exactly the same style and color as regular text, so that
the visitor must roll over the link for the underscore or hover
color to show. This breaks our rule number C1: be clear, don't
keep them guessing.
- Make sure text links
are a different style from plain text so it is blatantly obvious
that they are links.
- Use either a different
color or an underscore or both to indicate a link.
- Be sure that links to other
websites open in new browser windows. And to meet W3C
accessibility guidelines, such links should warn the user
that a new window will open.
When your site visitors click
a link, make sure it goes somewhere! When you link to another website
you have no idea when that site will reorganize or just go away
altogether. That's just one of the reasons that all links that
take visitors off your site should be set to open in a new browser
window. Worse yet is links between pages within your own site that
are broken. To be certain you don't have dead links:
- Run a link check routine
as part of your regular content review (described in content
mistake #1). Your CMS or web authoring software may have
a link checker built in.
- Or, the W3C (World
Wide Web Consortium) has a simple online
link-checking tool.
#8:
Clever
How important are search
engines to the success of your website? Depending on the nature
of your site, it is probable that from 50% to upwards of 80%
of the traffic arrives at your site via a search engine. Understanding
how search engines rank your site in search results will allow
you to be clever when you prepare your content, so they rank
you higher all the time.
There is an enormous amount
of information about SEO (search engine optimization), and all
website content managers should study up! Most SEO is common sense,
and basis of any good SEO program is the right content.
Read in-depth about making
your content search-engine friendly.
You should analyze your
site's traffic so you know where visitors are coming from and
what keywords they have searched for when they arrive at your
site. Those are essential clues for you to prepare compelling,
sticky content that will keep your visitors happy and keep them
coming back for more. Your site probably has some type of traffic
analysis tool like Webtrends or Urchin. If you don't have a good
traffic analysis tool, install Google
Analytics, it's free! Then
regularly review the results and continually enhance your content
so it is optimized for the keywords for which you want to rank
high in search results.
#9:
Compatible
Your site's content must
display properly and consistently in all major web browsers.
This is a BIG one. Building and maintaining websites can be a
messy business. Unfortunately your site visitors are using a
broad variety of web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera,
Google Chrome, Safari, etc.) including all the old and new versions
of those browsers (IE 5.0 IE 6.0, IE 7.0, etc.) and different
operating systems (Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OSX, Linux,
etc.). The worst part is that all these browser and OS combinations
seem to want to display your web pages differently. On top of
that you don't have any control over how the user sets up his
system, fonts, etc. Plus everyone has a different size monitor.
Yikes, what's a webmaster
to do? Here's what:
- Don't assume if your site
looks good in all browsers, you simply must test it.
- Set the standards you want
to meet: the browser, OS and screen size specs for which you
want your website to look good. We recommend at minimum: Windows
Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 and Firefox 3, Mac Safari 3 and
4 and Firefox 3; design for a 1024 x 768 screen size.
- The only way to make sure
your site looks good and functions properly is to set up a Windows
PC and a Mac with the browsers for which you have decided to
optimize. Then, go through your site page by page and look at
it, test the links, test and submit any forms, etc.
- You can take a quick snapshot
of how your site will look in a huge range of browsers using
an online tool from BrowserShots.
That's a good start but it's time consuming and doesn't allow
you to actually test the web pages — you just get to see
how they look in different browsers. Geotek Netrender will
give you screen shots for IE 5, 6 and 7.
Read
more about which browsers and screen sizes are important
to optimize for, based on their popularity.
#10:
Compliant
Is your content is accessible
to disabled web visitors according to W3C
guidelines? Did you know that in 1998 Target settled a class
action suit brought by the National Federation for the Blind,
and the result was not only forced to fix its website to make
it accessible the disabled, it also paid over $6 million for
claimants, plus undisclosed attorney fees. Clearly if you are
a high-profile national brand you must pay attention. There are
many blind, visually impaired, hearing impaired, and people with
other disabilities who use screen readers and other aids to surf
the web. We should strive to make our content accessible to them.
Most compliance issues are technical
and are dealt with when your site's navigation and page structure
are initially designed. But some accessibility issues must be addressed
every time content is added or edited on your site, even if the
site is already W3C compliant :
- When images are added, alt
tags must be included. An alt tag is an alternative text description
that makes it possible for visually-impaired web visitors using
screen readers to understand the content of images. Alt tags
also help with search engine optimization by increasing keywords
for the actual content on your web pages. You CMS should provide
a way to add an alt tag for every image on your site.
- Links that open new browser
windows or that leave your site should include a description
to that effect. For example, hover over this
link and note the description that appears.
- Other types of content, video
for example, presents more difficult challenges from a compliance
standpoint. Your organization should formulate a policy as to
which of the W3C
guidelines you will meet, and then implement content strategies
accordingly.
Is it time to review your
website's content?
It's possible that just
during the time you spent reading this article, something on
your site has gone out of date. Better check
it out!
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