Writing for the Web isn’t like writing for print. You have about 3 seconds to grab visitors’ attention, warm them up and entice them to stay. Follow these steps to get them to read what you have to say and hunger for more.

• Be Relevant. Take off your comfy shoes and put on those of your visitors. What do they want to know about? Write less about what you want to say and more about what will be valuable to your audience. When your readers connect with your content, they will come back for more.
• Clean House. “K”onsistency is King, so if you choose black Arial font for your main body text, keep it that way throughout. Bulleted list can be your friend, but keep them to a maximum of 7 points. The idea is to make items easy to read, not look like a grocery list. Also, try to write in the same tone throughout, so the transition from one page to the next is seamless.
• Give Up the Grapes. Don’t make your audience climb the tree. Tell visitors what they want to know in the first few lines so they don’t need to mine for what they are looking for. Remember, 3 seconds.
• Link, Baby, Link. Have a lot to say but limited on space? Include a short and sweet teaser for each topic and a link to more information, whether inside or outside of your website. Even when the writing turf is wide open, embed links within body content to make it more lively, credible, and interesting.
• For Goodness Sake, PROOFREAD! What’s worse than having the integrity of your great message negated by the typo you didn’t catch?? Nothing! Read, re-read, backward, forward, up, down and all around. Pass it around for others to read. Post it on the walls. Do whatever you need to do to ensure mistakes are found. Then, when you’re done, read it again.

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