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UIE Virtual Seminar Presentation

Writing Web Content that Works

People visit your web site for the content, not for the joy of navigating or searching. The key to great web content is to think about content as conversation.

Every use of your web site is a conversation started by your site visitor. To prepare successful content, you must think about your site's visitors, their scenarios—why they come to your site—and how they want to see and read (and not read) the information on your site. Thinking of people and their scenarios is critical for the entire web site and even for each web page.

This Virtual Seminar is about getting the optimum content with the right words, with the right design, in the right place to meet site visitors' needs. We'll consider what content goes where and why; how little most people want to read on web sites; when to market – and when not to market—on your web pages; how to break up large blocks of text; how to write so busy people can get what they need and come back when they need more.

Just some of the implications Ginny will explore with you, thinking of content as a conversation started by your site visitor:

• Links must be in site visitors' words: That means being careful about naming reports and articles whose titles will show up as links on the web site.
• Site visitors are very focused on what they came for: They're likely to ignore mission statements, marketing efforts, paragraphs on the home page or pathway pages too soon.
• Focus on giving information not on posting documents: Most site visitors want specific information not a long lecture.
• Break up long text into short pieces: Write your web pages as questions and answers. The questions are the site visitor's voice. The answers are your voice.
• When writing sentences, be conversational: Write to your site visitors, using pronouns. In two-part sentences, put the context first, the new information second.

Ginny has provided a sneak preview for part of her presentation:

If you've ever struggled with copy writing -- or writing anything -- on your site, this presentation is perfect for you.

Ginny's work is grounded in her background as a linguist as well as what she has learned from conducting hundreds of usability tests and applying her guidelines to web content for many different audiences. She's well known for finding the practical applications of research and communicating them in useful and enjoyable ways. You're bound to find practical take-aways you can apply immediately after the session. And we'll have lots of time for your questions.

Instructor Biography

Janice (Ginny) Redish is president of Redish & Associates, Inc., a small, woman-owned firm in Bethesda, Maryland. Ginny helps government agencies and private companies create successful web sites by training their web content writers, web developers, and web managers. She helps improve their web sites through her expertise in plain language and usability. Ginny is sought after as a speaker and workshop leader. She is a dynamic instructor who has trained thousands of writers and subject matter specialists in the U.S., Canada, Asia, and Europe in writing for the web and other topics. Ginny has keynoted conferences in the U. S., England, Norway, and Slovenia; and just a few months ago, she gave the keynote for User Friendly 2008, the annual conference of the China Chapter of the Usability Professionals' Association.

Ginny's recent book, Letting Go of the Words – Writing Web Content that Works, has received rave reviews on Amazon.com and other book sites. It's consistently in the top 10 bestsellers in Amazon's list for Web Architecture and Usability. It won a Distinguished Technical Communication Award in the international competition of the Society for Technical Communication and Best of Show in the local Washington, DC Chapter competition.

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