- Do know your audience
It's important to know
your audience.
If you write for a site
that sells toys you'll use other words, colors,
images etc. compared to a
site for online banking.
Write and design with your
visitors in mind. Don't get tempted to
write for yourself.
- Do write about the subject
Write about the subject.
Saying: This page is
about breeding goat talks about the page.
Instead, start right away
with the subject. Breeding goat is a
popular
hobby....
- Do use short sentences
Use short sentences.
The World Wide Web is
fast. Your visitors want to get your info in a
snap. So read and reread
your text. Then cut out as many
unnecessary words as
possible.
- Don't use meaningless words
Do you have a cool site with hot subjects?
Or a hot site with cool subjects?
On some hype-sensitive sites these kind of
words might be useful but on
most sites you'd better refrain from
meaningless words.
- Don't use jargon
Avoid jargon.
That goes for Internet
jargon but also for jargon for any other
subject.
Only if your site is
focused on a selective group of specialists
jargon might make sense.
- Don't write technical
Don't write technical.
Your visitors don't care how you created your
site and that you prefer
Perl over TCL/TK (or the other way
around).
Instead write about your
subject.
- Do use the first screen
Be sure to put important
text on the first part of your page, the part
that will show up first on
a screen.
- Do present the issues right away
Your visitor wants to know
immediately what she can find on your
site. Keep that in mind
when designing your site.
Present the important
issue(s) of your site on the first page.
- Do use a descriptive title
The text for the tag
<TITLE> should be descriptive.
The title shows up in the
results of search engines. A descriptive
title makes clear what
people can expect on your site.
The title is also shown in
the history list of browsers.
- Do use small pages
The World Wide Web is not
a book. People don't read it
sequentially. They want to
select a small piece of info and decide
what info they want to
read next.
So you should provide
small pages. Cut long pages in pieces and
connect them through
hyperlinks.
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