Fix-It Friday (No. 1): Dulas

Fix-It Friday is a new series of posts where I show how a website page can be improved by applying a few web copywriting principles. My primary aim is make visitors’ lives easier.

Within just an hour, it’s possible to make a page more readable, accessible and search friendly. I also explain what else I’d do if I had more time. Look at the difference a web copywriter can make!

Dulas provides professional renewable energy services from its base in the heart of Wales. I like its website; the design’s fresh, modern and uncluttered, with clear navigation.

I’ve decided to look at the ‘About Dulas’ page from a web copywriting perspective.

• Web page before (image)
• Good points
• Could do better
• Web page after (image)
• Fixes made in one hour
• If I had more than an hour, I’d…

Web page before

(Click on the image for a larger version.)

Good points

• Individual <title> and <description> tags for each page
• Use of H1 tag for page heading
• Well written, interesting information
• Sub titles used to break the text up

Could do better

• There’s too much information: the page is very long
• The text is wordy in places and there are a couple of errors
• Copy needs better formatting
• The sub titles are in <strong> tags; they’d be better in H2 headers
• Text contains no links to other pages within the website or externally
• The page URL is not descriptive
• The <description> tag needs a bit of tweaking

Web page after

(Click on the image for a larger version.)

Fixes made in one hour

• Lightly edited the copy to simplify wording and ‘front load’ the text
• Removed some information that could sit better elsewhere
• Placed current sub titles into H2 header tags
• Added additional sub titles to break up text further
• Added links from key phrases to relevant pages both within the website and externally
• Highlighted other key words and phrases in <strong> tags
• Placed listed information into proper lists

If I had more than an hour, I’d…

• Edit or rewrite the text to simplify it, focus the information and reduce page length considerably…
• …and/or add in-page links at the top of the page to jump to relevant sections (visitors can see straight away the page content without scrolling, plus the usual benefits)
• Rewrite the <description> tag
• Add more links from the text to help users navigate throughout the website
• Consider the page and its section as a whole, and as an integral part of the complete website

Do you want me to make over a page on your website? If you’d like to suggest a site for me to consider, get in touch!

Useful tools: Delicious

In the second of this (very) occasional series about things I use to help me work, I want to talk about Delicious. It’s been around for a while, and indeed I’ve been using it since I started up as a freelancer. Its staying power can only be a good thing!

It’s ideal for keeping track of all those handy articles I find and read (or intend to read…), as well as sharing them via my websites. However, it was only at the weekend when I had a bit of a fiddle around with it that I discovered some handy features.

From many to one

Previously, I had a Delicious account for each of my blogs (which proliferate faster than I can keep up), with a different log-in for each. In addition, since Yahoo bought Delicious, many of these now have Yahoo log-ins instead.

Fed up with all these different usernames and passwords (plus I don’t use Yahoo for anything else), I decided to bring all my bookmarks (both public and private) under my original account. Delicious offers an easy-peasy import and export tool for doing just that.

Tailored link rolls

However, I don’t want all my bookmarks to show on each website; they’re very different topics. So, I created a tag specific to each one, which I apply as relevant to the saved article. Delicious’ link roll tool then allows me to specific that tag when creating the each feed.

In addition, there’s an option to bundle articles and pages with specific tags (like Gmail’s labelling system), to help you quickly see articles once in your account (rather than searching by a specific tag).

Keeping things private

Of course, some pages are not for the general public, and there’s a simple ‘private’ option (which also appears as a tag) to make sure these are kept hidden. I’m sure there are other tools still to discover too.

And, hey presto, one account with a single username and password, but tailored for each blog. Now I just need to remember to use the correct tag (the one possible source of error!). Follow me on Delicious.