Tags // Web Content
Personal pronouns: It’s okay to own your web copy
Wonderful post from Brain Traffic on using personal pronouns in your web copy. I do agree, at times, it can be difficult to sell this in some organisations, but I also agree, it may be just a matter of adopting or getting comfortable with a style.
Using personal pronouns may sound like a simple, common-sense web writing best practice. Speaking directly to users with the word “you” is something most companies get on board with easily enough. But those same clients often ask us to avoid self-referential pronouns like “we,” “our,” and “us” in their web copy.
web content Add tag Permalink | Friday, March 12, 2010
Web project team roles
Kristina Halvorson has put up an interesting diagram that shows how the different roles in a we project team relate to one another.
information architecture, content strategy, web content Add tag Permalink | Saturday, January 09, 2010
Three types of web content management projects
Jeff Cram has written about 3 types of content management system projects.
- The technical migration
- The visual design
- The strategic redesign
I think this captures a lot of projects I've done over the years. However, I'd like to add 'The politically motivated' to the list. These are projects that make you wonder why they are "on" in the first place.
[Via ColumnTwo]
content management, web content Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Web content migration: disastrous strategy
Gerry McGovern says it's no point taking old intranet content and migrating it to a new system. I do agree that it's a waste of resources to migrate content that is not useful. But many intranets do have useful information. The problem is that the useful info is in bits and pieces and present all over the intranet. This is where migration issues become tricky. Yes, intranets can have a clean up during the redesign, even using copywriters to prep the content. But this is not a long term strategy. Unless there is a shared commitment to publish good quality content, any clean up will last only till the next published piece. A shared commitment takes time and does require constant monitoring. And yes, it does require few people to drive the initiative -- the guiding coalition. Only when this is in place that we can expect to address the reasons for bad content that McGovern lists:
- We allow the organization to publish puff, fluff and vanity, instead of focusing on the needs of our customers/staff.
- We don’t hire web content professionals. Instead we find the most junior person in the department and give them the job of managing the website.
- We don’t see the Web as a unique medium-we just take print content and print thinking and shovel it onto the Web.
- We don’t review and quality control. We have practically no processes to take old content off our website.
intranets, web content Add tag Permalink | Sunday, November 23, 2008
Turn Usable Content into Winning Content
On writing well for the online environment:
"Findable. Scannable. Readable. Concise. Layered. We know much these days about how to make Web content usable—thanks to experts such as Robert Horn, Jakob Nielsen, Ginny Redish, and Gerry McGovern. What we don’t understand as well, however, is how to make content win users over to take the actions we want them to take or have the perceptions we want them to have. We don’t understand how to make Web content both usable and persuasive. I, by no means, intend to imply that we should sacrifice the usability of content to make it more persuasive. Truly winning content must be both."
web content Add tag Permalink | Sunday, March 02, 2008
Improving the User Experience with In-page Navigation
I've written an article on in-page navigation over at PebbleRoad. Here's the introduction:
In-page navigation techniques are used to layout web content on a page. When used properly they improve the user experience. But when misused they just add to the anxiety. This article chalks out the different in-page navigation options available to us and offers some tips on using them effectively.
web content Add tag Permalink | Thursday, March 08, 2007
F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content
Jakob Nielsen writes about the implications of the F-shaped reading pattern:
- Users won't read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won't.
- The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There's some hope that users will actually read this material, though they'll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.
- Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behavior. They'll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words.
web content Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, April 26, 2006
An Alternative for Search and Knowledge Management
Dan Ryan of Stellent writes about the benefits of intranet views, a way for the intranet to cater to staff needs:"The Intranet Views model applies a multi-site Web content management paradigm to document management repositories, giving employees relevant and useful "views" of all knowledge within a company intranet. Essentially, each View is a micro-site based on a topic — such as products, processes or business functions — within a larger intranet that groups information together, so it is contextually relevant for consumers."
knowledge management, web content Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Quality Web Content: Writing Resources
Quality Web Content: Writing Resources
Good articles on the writing web content.
[thanks infodesign]
web content, writing Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, February 25, 2004
elearningpost: 5 Questions with Gerry McGovern
elearningpost: 5 Questions with Gerry McGovernI had the opportunity to query Gerry McGovern, widely acknowledged web content guru, on some knowledge management and e-learning issues that were bothering me. Here is the short Q&A session I had with him.
web content Add tag Permalink | Thursday, September 25, 2003
W3C: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
W3C: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0This Working Draft for version 2.0 builds on WCAG 1.0. It has the same aim: to explain how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities and to define target levels of accessibility.
web content Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, July 01, 2003
Gerry McGovern: Metadata is essential web writing skill
Gerry McGovern: Metadata is essential web writing skill"Metadata gives your content context. Content that does not have effective metadata is not web content. It is sloppy, next-to-useless print content that has been unprofessionally published on the Web. If you don't have time to publish professional metadata for your content, you shouldn't be allowed to publish anything on a website."
web content, metadata, writing Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Gerry McGovern: Why organizations think of web content like they think of invoices
Gerry McGovern: Why organizations think of web content like they think of invoices"The fundamental difference between print content and web content is that web content has the potential to be much more action-oriented. Talk to most managers and they see content as a task that takes them away from their 'real' work. Once written, most content gets left on the shelf.
The modern manager needs to see content as part of their real work. It is no longer the record of work done. The Web is important and content is where the action is."
web content Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Intranet Journal: Content Management: What’s in it for me?
Intranet Journal: Content Management: What's in it for me?"Think of how much information resides on reams of paper or in a file cabinet somewhere, that information can be invaluable to an organization for many reasons. This type of information is referred to as unstructured information. The challenge of acquiring, accessing, managing, and distributing unstructured information are a significant reason organizations looked first to micrographics, then to CM, document imaging, and document management technologies to assist in that endeavor. Today, the Internet is driving an ever-increasing need to provide fresh, timely, and relevant content to their websites. To that end, Web Content Management (WCM) solutions have emerged to assist."
content management, web content Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, December 03, 2002
W3C: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
W3C: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0W3C published the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0) as a Recommendation in May 1999. This Working Draft for version 2.0 builds on WCAG 1.0. It has the same aim: to explain how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities and to define target levels of accessibility.
web content Add tag Permalink | Monday, October 28, 2002
New Architect: Demystifying Document Management
New Architect: Demystifying Document ManagementThe CMS marketplace is complex. Document management, collaboration and versioning tools, digital asset management, learning content management, and Web content management all fall under the CMS umbrella, which also brushes up against topics like CRM, document warehousing, and knowledge management. Each of these areas is distinct from the others, but they are often confused...
web content Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, October 02, 2002
ADT: Managing Web Content (via
ADT: Managing Web Content (via webword) Corporate America has long had a mixed response to the question of whether to buy or roll its own applications. That debate is now being renewed in the arena of Web content management. Some customers maintain it makes more sense to build their own system, especially given the rich development tools available today. But analysts generally caution against it, saying it is a giant money pit with little real return.web content Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, January 15, 2002
A List Apart: CMS &
A List Apart: CMS & the Single Web Designer The final goal of any successful CM implementation is to make the creation of web content so easy that more people do it more often: they create more webbased projects and find more things to put out on the web. An enterprise can begin complex projects like knowledge management or customer relation management, shifting resources (yes, you) from daytoday web tasks to loftier and more complex design work. And that will only make the designer more valuable.web content Add tag Permalink | Monday, January 14, 2002
Gerry McGovern: The Web Content
Gerry McGovern: The Web Content Style Guide: Designing for the Web: Part 1The Web was invented as a communications medium for publishing content. Publishing content on the Web is just like publishing content anywhere else. It needs to be concise, well written, well organized, well presented, and well targeted.
style guide, web content Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, January 08, 2002
A list apart: Information Vs
A list apart: Information Vs ExperienceTo be fair, live entertainment does already involve low-level collaboration between users and authors. A good storyteller, singer or comedian giving a live performance can be less sequential since he or she has the luxury of being able to evaluate the audiences reaction and adjust the performance accordinglysomething that movies and books cannot do. Feedback mechanisms do exist on the web, but are currently quite primitive in comparison to the interaction between live human performers and their audiences. The current web also forces decisionsusers must interact for the narrative to progress because nothing new arrives until the user clicks another link. It is currently difficult to author web content where the user can sit and experience a sequential flow of experience, only interacting when they choose to.
web content Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, October 31, 2001