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Avoid the 7 deadly content
mistakes
Artisan Content's articles are
written for non-technical people who manage web content. This article
will help you avoid some of the most common problems related to
website content.
Mistake
#1: "I'm finished with my website"
By far the biggest mistake
with website content is what you DON'T do: keep it up-to-date.
It can be a daunting task, whether your site has dozens, hundreds,
or even thousands of pages. But few things will put off visitors
and even discredit your organization faster than dated content.
If visitors go to your calendar of events and find no new events
posted since six months ago, it may be a sign to them that they
can't trust any of the content on your site.
Don't let your content get out
of date. Here's how:
- Start with an inventory of
all the pages on your site (use your site map if you have one).
- Then group the pages into
categories according to how quickly the content will go out of
date: weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, etc. Calendars of
events are examples of content that may go out of date every
week or two (or maybe every day). Press releases or price lists
or may need to be reviewed monthly. The history of your organization
may only need to be revisited annually.
- Once you have grouped all
your site's pages into these categories, put content review reminders
on your calendar.
- When a review date arrives,
carefully look over all the content on the pages in the review
group and make updates as needed.
Careful planning — and
then setting aside the time and resources needed to update the
content on schedule — will assure that visitors are never
put off by stale content.
Mistake
#2: "I'll use the text from my brochure on the website"
It's tempting to just
copy the content right out of a printed brochure and paste it
into your website. Usually that is a mistake. People read websites
differently than they read printed pieces. In fact people generally
don't READ websites, they scan them. So before you just copy
and paste from your print materials, follow this checklist for
web copy:
- 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.
- For the web, avoid long blocks
of white text on dark background colors, these are much harder
to read online than in print.
- A picture is
worth a thousand words. Eliminate text and replace it with a
photos or illustrations.
There are also minor technical
snafus when you copy and paste text from printed materials (or
from Word documents - see mistake #3). For example, watch for special
characters (like quote marks, apostrophes and dashes) that do not
work the same on websites as in print.
Read in-depth tips on writing
for the web.
Mistake #3: "I'll just
copy the text from Word and paste it in"
Have you ever copied text
from a Word document and pasted it into your web content management
system (CMS), only to find that this action messes with the formatting
of the text on your site? That happens because text copied from
Word (or other rich text documents) contains formatting that
comes along for the ride and can wreak havoc on your website
formatting in the process. And once it happens it's hard to undo.
An ounce of prevention
will save you a pound of cure... just don't paste formatted text
into a CMS or web authoring tool. First, copy the text from Word
and paste it into a plain text document, then copy it again and
paste it into your CMS. Or, if your CMS has a "Remove Formatting" button
on the toolbar, paste in the text from Word, select it all, and
click the "Remove Formatting" button.
Voila! It's that easy. To learn
more tips including how to get the undesirable formatting out of
your CMS if you fall victim to the "pasted from Word" problem,
read more on pasting formatted
text into a CMS.
Mistake
#4: "I'll insert a JPEG of the logo"
Are you SURE you want
to use a JPEG of the logo? Selecting the right type of file for
images on your website is an important part of "image optimization" — the
art and science of getting the best looking, fastest loading
images possible. Did you know that most logos should probably
be GIF or PNG files, not JPEGs? That's because most logos are
designed with just a few colors and simple, bold lines and text
— and those types of images reproduce best online as GIFs
or PNGs. A photograph, on the other hand, almost always reproduces
best online using a JPEG file format.
These are general rules of thumb:
- Use JPEGs for photographs
and full-color illustrations (like full-color drawings or paintings).
- Use GIFs or PNGs for text
images and simple illustrations (such as line art).
- Use GIFs or PNGs for irregular-shaped
images when a transparent background is needed.
Of course there are exceptions
to any rule, and that's where the art and science of image optimization
comes in. Read more
in-depth information about knowing when to use a JPEG v. a
GIF v. a PNG.
Mistake
#5: "I'll shrink the photo to size"
Have you ever visited
a website and it took forever (that's like 15 seconds in internet
time) for an image to load? The last thing you want to do is
keep your visitors waiting while images load. At best it's a
bad experience, at worst they will get impatient and leave, never
to return. Correct image optimization is critical to site performance
and a positive user experience. And one of the biggest mistakes
that adversely effects image loading time is reducing the physical
size of an image in the CMS rather then before you place the
image.
- Don't resize images in a
CMS (or web authoring tool like Dreamweaver, FrontPage or SharePoint).
- Use Photoshop (or another
image editing tool) to crop and shrink images to exactly the
right size for your web page BEFORE you put it in place using
the CMS.
Read
in-depth information about optimizing images for the web.
Mistake
#6: "I'll drop in a Windows Media movie file"
Video is extremely popular
on the web and fortunately there are now easy and effective ways
to get video content on your site. Posting video in Windows Media
(.wmv) or Quicktime (.mov) video formats is not the
way to go, however. Those video formats require the user's computer
to have Windows Media Player or QuickTime software installed,
and many people do not have those applications. A much more universal
format for web video is Flash video. Adobe
estimates that over 98% of personal computers have the Flash
player installed. Plus, unlike Windows Media, Flash allows video
content to play inside the web browser, right on you web pages.
Plus, Flash files are much smaller and faster loading than Window
Media files.
The easiest way to get Flash
video on your site is to follow these simple steps:
- First, upload your video
to YouTube (you
can also use Google
Video, Vimeo or
other video sharing sites).
- Next, once your video has
been processed and is ready to play, copy the embed code from
YouTube.
- Open the desired page on
your site using your CMS or web authoring tool and paste the
embed code into the html where you want the video to be on the
page.
For additional information about
getting video on your site, read
more here.
Mistake
#7: "I better proofread it before I publish it"
That doesn't sound like
a mistake, does it? The mistake is the "I"
better proofread it. Don't even think about it if you are the author
of the text! It is nearly impossible for us to accurately proof
our own writing because we know what we want it to say. And hope
fully you no u Kant trust Microscope Word or dream weavers' spell
chick to kitsch your errors, four they did knot I dent a fie a
shingle mistake in this cent tense.
Here is the best way to proofread
a website:
- Print the pages and read
them from paper — mistakes are harder to catch when you
read on screen, plus you need a hard copy to mark up.
- Read out loud to another
person while that person reads along and marks errors on the
hard copy.
- Read backwards! One sentence
at a time, start by reading the last sentence and move to the
beginning until all your copy is proofed. This keeps you from
speeding over errors.
- As you make the corrections
on your web pages, check them off the hard copy one by one.
- Proofreading a web page is
more than just reading. Be sure all the links work (see #C7:
Clickable) and that your site functions correctly in all
browsers (see C9:
Compatible).
- Lastly, have someone
else double check your corrections after they are made.
Is it time to start again
at #1?
Yes, most likely 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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