Client Login Page
Inner Journey Expeditions click here
Port Office Hotel click here
Caxton Hotel click here
Writing for Websites – Points to Remember
Sample pages for a basic site
Homepage
This is a very important page as it is most likely the entry point for your viewers.
Who are you?
Why do we need you?
What’s in it for me?
What important aspects of your business would you like to highlight with special links or buttons to those areas?
About us page
Company background
Who are your staff?
Is there something that you offer that makes you different? Eg. Customer service focussed etc.
Could contain your mission statement.
What are you committed to?
Could contain download PDFs of annual reports, for further reading.
Products/Services page/s
A section/s that contain information about your products/services.
Case Studies/Testimonials
Build your credibility and enhance your product/service offering by listing past jobs or projects.
It also another opportunity to showcase your work.
Events page
Up and coming events that you or an organisation that your customers would be interested in attending.
News page
This would need to be regularly maintained to ensure that fresh information is there to entice the reader back to your site. It could contain news from your company or news that relates to your field that your customers would find of interest and useful.
Contact Us page
Every website should have one.
Include all contact details including an email address.
Could include a subscribe to our e-newsletter form.
Could include an enquiry form.
Could include a map showing the location and any parking etc.
Simple site map
A sample site map is included here. Please feel free to fill it in or draw it up on a piece of paper, it will assist you to visualise the structure of your site.
Keep the message easy to read:
- Puns do not work for international users; find some other way to be humorous.
- Add by-lines and other ways of communicating some of your personality. (This also increases credibility.)
- 79% of Web users scan pages; they do not read word-by-word.
- Design your web document to be clear and concise with its written message. Assess what tells the story best, a picture, diagram or limited text – choose the best option that delivers the message easily.
- To make keywords stand out, use highlighting liberally. Highlight about three times as many words as you would when writing for print.
- Highlight only key information-carrying words. Avoid highlighting entire sentences or long phrases since a scanning eye can only pick up two (or at most three) words at a time.
- Highlight words that differentiate your page from other pages and words that symbolize what a given paragraph is about (for example, do not highlight the word “Sun” when writing for the Sun Web site since all the pages are about Sun.)
- Bulleted and numbered lists slow down the scanning eye and can draw attention to the important points.
- Each paragraph should contain one main idea; use a second paragraph for a second idea, since users tend to skip any second point as they scan over the paragraph.
- Start the page with the conclusion as well as a short summary of the remaining contents (“inverted pyramid” style).
JRGD has specialist web copywriters available to assist, however it is beneficial for you to understand that it is a different process to writing for the Web versus print or editorial.