My inclusion as an expert in the article was the result of responding to a query posted by the journalist on business social network LinkedIn. Its Questions and Answers section lets people from all over the world post a question to which they’d like professional guidance or opinions.

Not only that, but once the original poster has received all the responses they’d like, they can identify the best answer. This is then marked up on the profile of the person who responded, increasing their authority on the network.

‘Design before content’ is listed in an article identifying the top 10 design mistakes that web designers make. Bjørkøy goes on to emphasise, “…design for your content; don’t insert content into the design as an afterthought”.

This makes perfect sense to me and links back to the relationship between information architecture, intuitive navigation and effective web design. In reality, however, apart from a vague idea of what information a site will contain, the content is usually the last thing to be signed off or delivered by a client.

Why? Because, like it or not, clients are often juggling many different projects, of which their website is just one. The article suggests that one way to avoid this is to provide rolling deadlines, such as “relative timescales for portions of a site build, rather than specific dates”.

I’ve seen this from both sides of the fence, as a client and as a copywriter for digital agencies. It may work for some businesses but for others, it makes no difference. Many clients underestimate how long it takes to gather information, produce text and sign it off internally, and finally how long it takes to upload and edit once on the site. Tweaks and changes are inevitable.

Design and development teams need to educate clients on the importance of the content from the start. Provide some good and bad examples on good-looking websites to show what a difference it can make. They need to emphasise that it shouldn’t take a back seat to the design, which it often does because many people perceive the ‘words’ to be the easy part.

When creating an online style guide, the differences between online and offline communications and how content is generated should be taken into consideration.

In many instances, a network of administrators (not always professional communicators) add information onto a website via a content management system (CMS). They might not be very knowledgable about the best ways to write for a website, or sure of what information to include.

An online style guide can help to define some of the basic rules for writing for the web, such as the right language to use online, how to structure the content to make it easier to read, or even what fonts and colours to use.

It also serves many of the same purposes as a style guide for printed publications. For example, it helps to make sure that all websites have a consistent tone of voice, and that spellings and capitalisations particular to the business are used correctly. It’s also a valuable document to give to external agencies that might be producing online content for the company.

There are some excellent examples of online style guides available for free, which you can use as inspiration if you want to develop your own (or you can contact me to do it for you!).

Here’s a selection of the best I’ve found to date:

• The AA: Writing and editing for theAA.com
• Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC): Communications toolkit - interactive media
• Higher Colleges of Technology, UAE: Web WORDing
• Central Office of Information (COI): Web standards and guidelines
• London Metropolitan University: Publishing to the LondonMet website

In the standard views Word presents your document in, the text is laid out as it might look on an A4 piece of paper. This, of course, is not how it will appear on the website you’re writing it for (I hope!).

To help you (or your client) visualise how the text might look online, use Word’s ‘Read’ feature (usually found in the top toolbar, next to the symbol of an open book).

Whilst this has been introduced to help users read Word documents more easily, it does so by applying some of the principles of good text layout for the web - by reducing the width of the sentences on screen and making the font larger.

Selecting the ‘Read’ view will help you to see how your copy might look on a website and where to introduce paragraph breaks, bullet points, headings and so on. It may also help your clients to see why you’ve done these things too, which can only be a good thing!

So, what is IA? According to the Information Architecture Institute, it’s:

…the art and science of organising and labelling websites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability.

Good IA helps users to make sense of a website and its content. So what does content strategy do? According to the article, its main aim is:

…to use words and data to create unambiguous content that supports meaningful, interactive experiences.

Structuring a website

Lovinger goes on to discuss what content is and how a simple website might not need much IA or content strategy.

(All sites need some though, no matter how small – I’ve seen websites of only six pages that were hard to navigate around. No thought had been put into how the visitors were to get from page to page, so the navigation was poor and buttons were badly labelled.)

But as more information is added and a site grows in size, it needs to be structured and organised according to tried and tested principles. This is where an information architect comes in, who will work on documents such as a sitemap or wireframes for the site. They’ll decide on buttons and other visual cues, for example.

What about the content?

A content strategist can then ‘craft the labels that are used on the buttons and think about what sort of language best conveys the messages of the site…and will also work closely with the [information architect] to make sure that the organisation of the site makes sense and will be supported by the content that’s available’.

Lovinger talks about the importance of creating content that’s:

• relevant to people
• more useful to machines
• produced more efficiently
• comprehensive

I think it’s important for any web writer to have a basic understanding of the link between IA and content. However, you don’t have to be a ‘content strategist’ to keep these ideas in mind - they are basic considerations for creating useful and usable copy.

Sarah describes universal usability as going ‘one step further’ than accessibility. Not only does it try to make content and functionality accessible to all users, it tries to make them usable too.

The book covers a range of topics, from document structure to interactivity, with lots of useful examples. A number of sections interest me as an online writer, including text, images (alt-text), links and editorial style.

Much of it is common sense and is similar to recommendations made by groups such as the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Other parts are simply best practice in terms of writing good copy for websites.

The site’s a good refresher for online writers and it’s a good place to start if you’re trying to find some basic guidelines.

*I was going to write about information architecture and content. Next time….

The event is being held by AbilityNet, a charity that helps disabled people use computers and the internet by adapting and adjusting their technology.

The day will cover areas such as user-generated content, tools to watch or avoid and assistive technologies.

There is also a session looking at how to build a social network for disabled users. It will use the Disability Information Portal (DIP) as a case study. This is a Web 2.0 site for disabled people, developed by Leonard Cheshire Disability.

It sounds like a very interesting day - registration closes at 3pm on Wednesday 23 April, so book soon if you want to attend.

When you know who you’re writing for, you can create an article that’s relevant and interesting - quality content for your readers.

At the most basic level, online writers usually consider two main audiences - people and computers. Humans and spiders. Your readers and the search engines.

By writing primarily for one audience (your readers) you can also satisfy the other (the search engines).

If you create a targeted article for a specific group of readers, it is likely that it will be keyword-rich fodder for the search engine spiders.

Readers are also more likely to share the article with their peers and link to it - something else the spiders look for when searching out results.

But when you begin to write for the search engines, rather than your readers, your writing becomes less useful.

As Copyblogger says this week, ‘it’s only natural that once your readers realise you are no longer providing quality content and shifting instead to useless keyword-filled articles, they will not be thrilled to stick around.’

So, remember to write for the humans. Your readers will continue to return and the spiders are happy too!

The entry’s first guideline is to ‘honour content’, because some typefaces that look good on paper look awful on screen. If it’s not readable, your copy is wasted!

The writer adds that ‘choosing type for the web is easier owing to fewer choices’. It is generally agreed that san-serif fonts are better for page copy for all site visitors to read. They are better for dyslexic readers, for example, because letters are less pixellated and therefore sharper than many serif fonts.

The post adds that these choices are beginning to increase, due to ‘sIFR and ‘web fonts’, so it’s all the more important to think carefully about the type we use’.

She is new to managing websites and is relying on the agency to provide recommendations regarding site content, including its structure and presentation.

As the project is coming to a close, I was surprised to hear that she had been given no advice regarding, at a basic level, suitable alt tags for images or text layout. This would have taken the agency only a couple of minutes to explain and improved the accessibility of the site for many users. So why didn’t it?

The site was also lacking basic nagivation and orientation features, such as a breadcrumb trail. Which leaves me wondering, how many other digital agencies are charging their clients for basic advice they’re never receiving?