When writing content for digital, including websites, blogs and email, take a “mobile-first” approach and optimize for the small screen viewing experience over the desktop screen experience.
Be direct and concise
- A good rule to remember when writing for mobile is: if in doubt, leave it out.
- Use inverted pyramid style, just like a journalist. Put the most important information up front in short, simple sentences. Remember the basics of journalism: who, what, where, when, how and why.
Cut the fluff
- Leave out greetings, transitions, and framing phrases such as “the following information” or “welcome to the department.” Say what you mean in as few words as possible.
- Divide content into paragraphs of 50 words or less. One-sentence paragraphs are OK.
- Defer supporting and detailed information to accordions or secondary pages. However, a best practice to follow when deferring information is to make the click for the extra information worth the effort.
- Avoid within-page links (also known as deep links, anchor tags or jump links) when deferring to supporting information because it violates user expectation that links bring up new pages. If you find yourself needing to rely on within-page links for secondary content, there is a good chance your content should be structured differently.
Prioritize the content on the page
- Move essential information into the main body of the page, preferably at the top. This includes moving vital information out of the sidebar and documents such as PDFs.
- Avoid information clutter. Evaluate whether related content items are necessary and directly related to the main content. Excessive content blocks can overwhelm and distract people.
- For content with bylines, put the byline at the bottom of the content unless the author is famous or has credentials that support its credibility.
Make it easy to find
Over 70% of users find our webpages via a search engine, completely bypassing a website’s homepage. You must optimize your webpages for SEO so people can find them.
- Use keywords in your page titles and page headings.
- Write meta titles and meta descriptions when developing content. This is what people see when your page displays in search results and tells them what they found.
- Look at current search results for your keywords and assess those results for content ROT (redundant, outdated, trivial). You want to make it easy for people to find the latest, greatest, most relevant information on the topic. Determine what should be removed from the website, what should be updated, and what should be linked together.
Make it easy to scan
- Use bullet points to make information more scannable.
- Use headers to break up pages into more digestible sections.
- Write headlines so they preview the breadth of information in a section or on a page.
- Structure content so it is scannable and headers preview the most important ideas captured in the body copy.
- Use expandable accordions to condense longer pages and make them more scannable.
- If you choose to use a ‘View More’ expandable, make sure that the most important information is visible on the page without needing to click. The expandable should include extra details that only some users may require.
Consider the structure of content groups
- If you include multiple calls-to-action within a content area, ensure the text style is parallel. Ex. Call to action buttons in the hero image. All should be an action or none should be.
- Ensure text in a given content group works together. Ex. If you are writing content for a new accordion subsection that includes an item title, paragraph and call to action button that links to a new page, consider how the paragraph and content within the Call-to-action button can set the user’s expectation about what they will see if they click.