Get To The Point, Before You Lose Your Readers

What to do about long pages and detailed instructions

Providing information and services is your business. If you are like most government entities you have a lot of information to provide. Being helpful you also want to provide the details and keep people fully informed of options or requirements.

Characteristics of Website Users
Wait just a second though, don’t forget that your website users are real people. They want to:
· Skim and scan
· Read links and short descriptions
· Use search features to find what they want

How to Present Long Copy
Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice providing information with a little planning your content will be easier for people to use. Here are a few ideas for working with long web pages:
· Use headers to help people jump to the information they want
· Break information into several pages
· Can’t break up the information – no problem, use bookmarks within the page. (Don’t forget to provide hyperlinks to take them back to the top of the page.)
· If you decide a PDF is the best option here is a helpful hint: Provide a short description of the document. Nothing is more irritating for people with slower connections than waiting for a large document to download then finding out it isn’t even what you needed!

Presenting Tasks or Instructions
Instructional pages can be just as easy! You might also want to consider numbering the steps making it easy to follow. For example:
1. Complete form. (link to the form)
2. Make payment. (link to payment options page)
3. Receive confirmation.
Self-service options not only allow your site user to complete the task, but also promote good will, reduce waste, and actively promote environment friendly actions!

Resource Books for Content Writing
If you’d like additional resources for web content writing you might check out some of these great books.
Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works By Janice Redish. Published by Morgan Kaufmann, June 2007.

The Web Content Style Guide: An Essential Reference for Online Writers, Editors and Managers By Gerry McGovern, Rob Norton, Catherine O'Dowd. Published by Financial Times Prentice Hall, October 2001.