Becky: Welcome everyone to Copywriting
for the Web: Today’s Best Practices. Thank you all for joining us
today. My name is Becky Wiegand and I am the Webinar Program
Manager here at TechSoup and I’m happy to be your host for
today’s event. You are using ReadyTalk, so before we get started I’d like to make
sure everyone is comfortable chatting in to us on the lower left side of your
screen if you need help at any time. You can do so to ask questions or to get help
with any technical issues you may experience. Most of you are hearing the audio
play through your computer speakers, so if at any time you are hearing an
echo you may be logged in more than once and might need to close additional instances.
Or if the slides and audio don’t stay in sync, we recommend dialing into the toll-free
number at any time to get clear audio from the phone and phone line. There is an
audio access code that has been shared out as well by my colleague Ale, so look in that
chat window.
We will keep all lines muted to get a nice clear recording for your
use. You will have access to the recording, and to the slides, and additional
materials in your follow-up email. We are, like I said, recording this and you
will be able to find it on the TechSoup website at techsoup.org/community/events-webinars.
That’s also where you can see the list of upcoming events. This will also be
added to our TechSoup video YouTube channel, so feel free to check there for any past events.
Within a few days you will get an email from me that includes all of these resources.
And if you would like to tweet today you can use the hashtag #tswebinars.
For those of you that registered earlier than an hour ago, you would have received
a reminder email similar to this one, and you will find “Downloadable Files” on the
right side where I have this arrow pointing to. There are the PowerPoint presentation
is a PDF that was sent out with that, as well as a couple of additional files for your
use.
So feel free to open that up and use those, and look at those as we go along. If
you get disconnected rejoin the meeting with this green “Join Meeting”
button. Again, my name is Becky Wiegand and I am the Webinar Program Manager here
at TechSoup. Today is my 9 year anniversary at TechSoup, so I’m happy
to be with you as your host. We are joined today by Dalya Massachi
who is a writer and the founder of Writing for Community Success.
She is
the award-winning author of the 2011 book, Writing to Make a Difference: 25 Powerful
Techniques to Boost Your Community Impact. And she has more than 20 years of experience
on everything from writing to the web, project management, editing, and coaching.
And she has actually helped coach here and train some of our internal writers here at
TechSoup, so we’re really happy to have her on. You can learn more about her work
at writingtomakeadifference.com. And we will share out more of her info as
we go along.
And you will have an opportunity to sign up for her newsletter, and access
some of her resources throughout this webinar. I’m headquartered here in our TechSoup
office as well as my colleague Ale Bezdikian who you’ll see on the backend helping
answer your questions. We are way over here. Tell us on the map where you are
joining us from in the world today, and then we will go ahead and get started
with our topic with our expert, Dalya Massachi, on Copywriting for the Web. Thank you
all for wishing me happy anniversary. I appreciate that. We’ve got folks
chiming in from Baltimore, Missouri, San Francisco as well, Michigan, Illinois,
Boston, Wisconsin, DC, Atlanta, Des Moines, Florida, all over the place, Toronto.
So thank you everyone for joining us. We’re really glad to have you on.
So with that I’d like to go ahead and have Dalya come on the line. We
have some questions to kind of ask you to get an idea from our audience of participants
what your level of experience is first, because that also gives us an idea kind
of where to target with some of the content that Dalya will be covering today.
So
I’m going to open this up and Dalya, feel free to chime in here. But how
long have you been writing for the Web? Go ahead and check the radio button on screen
that most reflects your level of experience. And if there’s something other you’d like
to write, feel free to chat that into us. I’ll give just a moment for
people to respond to this one.
We have about 150 people on
the line with us at the moment. Dalya: Hello can you hear me? Becky: Yes, you’re coming through loud
and clear. Thanks for joining us Dalya. Dalya: You’re welcome, and I’m
excited to be here with everyone. It sounds like we have a great group
from all over, so let’s work together. Becky: Yeah, and I’m going to go
ahead and show the results on this one. And if you want to share any other
experience or background with our audience, you are welcome to do that.
But it looks
like most, it’s a pretty even split really. We’ve got a three-way split between some
brand-new folks within the past few months have been starting to write copy for
the web, some who are a few years, and another 30% that are more than 5. So it’s
a pretty clear split between our audience. Dalya: Okay, that’s great. We’ll hopefully be
able to help each other, and address questions from all different levels of experience. Becky: Absolutely. So here’s
another question we have for you. Are you involved in the
decision-making about your web copy? Are you involved in actually implementing
the copy changes on your website? So maybe you are the one that actually
goes in and actually makes those edits. Are you doing both, or maybe you don’t have
either of those roles and you do something else, and you are just here because
you’re interested in the topic.
It looks like so far the great majority, from
what I can see on the backend, are doing both, and some that are decisionmakers.
Kathy asked a good question right now. And I know you can’t all see the chat so we
will do our best to manage questions in the back and share out any tips that are shared
from the audience with the rest of you. But she asked, “Will
you define web copy?” So Dalya, what would you
say is web copy’s definition? Dalya: Sure, I’m happy to do that. Web copy,
the word “copy” is really all about text, so whatever text appears on your
website would be considered web copy. We also use the word “content” for it, “web
content.” And usually content involves the text, and the graphics, or the photos.
So I’m
actually going to be talking about both today, but my emphasis is on the text
or the writing, the “copy” part. Becky: Yeah, that’s great. And I would
agree that it can be more than just text when you’re talking about overall
content, and content planning. But yeah, the copy is what we
are primarily focused on today. But let’s go ahead and do this last slide.
It looked like the prior poll question it was nearly 90% of you are both decision
– maker and implementer of web copy changes. So that crowd is pretty
unanimous, or close to unanimous. And then this one is just how frequently,
when was the last time you made these updates, or updates to your web copy? Was it this
week, was it in the last couple of months, or maybe it has been a few months
since your site has been updated? And again, we’ll give just a few
more seconds for people to respond and then we will dive
into Dalya’s content. It looks like over half of you have
made updates this week, which is great.
And 35% or so in the last 1 to 2 months,
and 12% more than 3 or more months ago. So that’s a little chunk that’s got some
content that is staying up for quite a while. So with that I’d like to go ahead and
turn it over to you Dalya to take it away and talk people through your background, and
your expertise here that you’re going to share with us. Thanks so much. Dalya: Okay, thank you Becky.
And I’m excited
that we’ve got most of you all are working on your site kind of regularly, so that
is excellent. I’m glad to hear that. We’ve got some people who haven’t
been working on their site for a while, and that’s okay. We are going to kind of hope to
prod you along to get you to do a little bit more of that. And let’s see what’s going on
here. I think this is where we start, yeah. Okay so this is just a little bit about my
background in addition to what Becky shared. I’ve been actually working in the
sector for about, for over 20 years. I have authored lots of different types of
documents.
Today we are focusing on websites. My book “Writing To Make A Difference”
covers pretty much everything, but we are going to focus and customize
it today, specifically on website copy and/or content. And I’ve trained tons
of people, thousands of people actually. So I’m happy to answer any questions. I
just wanted to kind of put that out there. There is a chat window, so feel free to ask
your questions. We will hold them until the end when we are going to be doing a Q&A session.
So we will hopefully get to your question. And if we don’t at that time, I’m happy to
follow up with you and provide you some answers. This is just a little bit more about
me. I don’t need to bore you with that. So let’s move on to the outline of what
we are going to be talking about today.
So the first question, why is web
copyrighting so important in the first place? Why do we care about it so much? Then
we are going to be looking at 3 keys to planning your website copy. We’re going
to be talking about what today’s web users are about, and what they’re thinking
about, where they are coming from. Then we are going to be looking at
some specific strategies and tactics concerning usability and
accessibility to improve your website.
And then we’ll do a little bit of an
introduction to SEO, search engine optimization. That is people finding you
via search engines on the web. We’re going to hopefully have some time to look
at some websites including one from a client of mine that is kind of a work in progress,
and then hopefully will be able to get to 3 more that were submitted by folks like you for today’s
webinar. And finally, we’ll have that Q&A session I mentioned. So first of all, what’s the big deal about web
copy or web content? Why is it so important? Well, 3 big things here. It’s going to
answer the big questions that are on the minds of your audience, your users, your
readers when they come to your site. They want to know first off, what is this
about? What is this organization about? Can I figure it out in just a couple, 2
to 3 seconds, because that’s really all I’m going to give you of my
time unless I know who you are.
I also want to know who this website is
for, that is, is it for people like me? Is it for someone else? I want to know
if it’s really relevant to my life. And finally, once I kind of know who your
organization is and who the website is for, I need to know why should I care about what
you are doing. Why should I get involved? Why should I care? Why should
I spend my time on your website? So those are the big 3 questions. And
I’ll kind of come back to some of those, or at least those ideas
throughout this presentation today. Well, actually before I go onto planning
I wanted to say a couple more things here in terms of the content’s importance.
Your website is not just your brochure. And sometimes people think of a
website as an online brochure.
Well, no. It’s actually much more than that. It’s an
opportunity to engage your user or your reader in your work on many different levels,
not just reading through like a brochure, but actually interact with you , and be part
of your work. So I encourage you to think of your website as much more than just a static
kind of thing which is why I also encourage you to work on it regularly to update
it, make it a living document. So that’s all I need to say on
that. Then let’s move on to planning. So I promised you 3 planning keys to
start thinking about how am I going to put this website together, or how am
I going to upgrade my current website? So the first planning key is to focus on your
brand.
And sometimes people may, or may not know what I mean by brand, so I’m just going
to kind of get us all on the same page here. When I talk about brand I’m talking
about these kind of things on this slide; what your organization stands
for, what you want to be known for, and if your organization were a
person, what would be your personality? What would be your identity? So if someone
were to think about your organization, what would spring to mind? All
of that is part of your brand, and this is something that you need
to reflect throughout your website. Let me explain. A big part of
your brand is your uniqueness. That is what makes your organization
different from anything else out there. You know that web surfers are just kind of
fickle sometimes and they are just looking at a website, and surfing away very
quickly if they don’t get what they need.
And part of that is they want to know why is
this website, or how is this website different from any other ones? So for you, I have some suggestions
that you might want to think about in terms of how you can set your organization
apart, or specifically talk about it in your website. So these are just some
suggestions for how to work with clients who are not being served very well, maybe
in a location that is not served very well.
Perhaps you have an innovative
way to address a stubborn problem that is on your readers' minds and you have
kind of a new or fresh way of dealing with it. So that could set you aside as being a unique
organization. Maybe you are filling a gap in your community that is not filled by anyone
else. Perhaps you have outstanding credentials or experience as an organization
that really sets you above and beyond. So I encourage you to think about this
type of thing in terms of your brand.
And you may have already done that. Perhaps
your organization has done a strategic planning process or branding process. So you
may already have some of these answers which is great. If you haven’t, I encourage you
to think about that because that will be important as you start to plan your website and the types
of content that you need to include in the site. So here is just a little opportunity for
you to think for a couple minutes here, to type in. When someone hears about your
organization what is one unique fact or feeling that you want them to associate with
you? I’ll just give you a minute or so to type something in.
Becky: Actually, we’ve got folks
chiming in responsive, compassion, enabling the future of healing, providing
a safe stable home, supporting youth, dignity, all kinds of adjectives. Dalya: Yeah, I’m looking at
the chat window here. Let’s see. All right, well I’m seeing a
lot of very positive phrases. And I wondered if people can make
them a little bit more specific as they think about their specific issue
and their specific way of dealing with it.
For example, if your work focuses on forests, or
children, or education, or something like that, that’s important to your work, but what
sets you apart in that field of endeavor. That is the type of thing that I encourage
you to think about in terms of your uniqueness. I see that some people are typing in
things along those lines. That’s excellent. Let’s just take a couple
more seconds on this. Okay. In addition to that, as you think about your
uniqueness, I think it’s important for you to think about why is your issue so crucial and
compelling that it has to be addressed right now. Because we know that web readers
are all about right now, instantly. They want to get their answers
right now, and they want to know, they want the most up-to-date information.
So I encourage you to think about what makes your website so important
that they must read it right now. Okay, so let’s move on
to planning key number 2.
So the first one is all about
your brand thinking through that, how can I really focus
and promote my brand? The second planning key is to really
think about your specific users. Who’s going be coming to your website
and what do they need when they get there? These are just some examples of the types
of people who may be visiting your website. Newbies, that is people that
have no idea what you’re about. They’ve never heard of your organization.
They may or may not really understand your issue either. On the other side of the spectrum we have
very experienced folks who know a lot about it, and they are really looking
for more in-depth information. Then we have donors. We have
clients or members, volunteers. There may be some media coming
to your website, colleagues and colleague organizations, and finally
researchers.
There may be some other groups that you can identify. But this is just
a list here to get you thinking about, who are these people? So these are just some basic things
we know about web readers in general that I wanted to share with you. The first
one is we know they have short attention spans. And I mentioned kind of briefly a few minutes
ago, that people give you about 2 or 3 seconds to really kind of impress them. When they
come to your website they are all about, “Okay, impress me, or otherwise
I’m to go to another website.” So I really encourage you to think about
if people have shorter attention spans, how am I going to kind of grab
them and engage them quickly? Another kind of point related to that, is people
read slower on screen than they do on paper.
So again, if we’ve got impatient short attention
span people, they are not going to want to read a lot on your website,
at least not right away. As I mentioned before, they need to know the
content is relevant to them before they read it, before they give more commitment to your
website. We know people scan websites. They usually look at the first 2
paragraphs, the headlines, the subheads, and they are looking for bold or unusual
characters. Usually bold or color characters will jump out off the page at
them. And finally, if you are lucky, they get to the ending and kind of look
for that. But usually they are looking more toward the first one or 2 screens to
make their assessment of whether they want to spend more time with you or not. Finally, the good thing about it
is that your website is shareable. So we know that web readers will share your
content if they like it, unlike brochures. I encourage you to put your viewer
or your reader in the spotlight. So when they are reading your website,
they are coming from their point of view. So what you need to do is show them that
you understand what they are going through, or what they’re looking for, and you are
going to show them how you can help them be part of whatever solution they are seeking.
So if they are seeking a solution for themselves, or if they are seeking a solution
for their larger community, they want to know that they
can be part of that solution, and that your organization
can help them do that.
You also want to encourage their trust in
you. We all know that the Internet is full of not so great information, or
not so trustworthy information. So we want to make sure that the information
that we impart on our website is trustworthy. Your website is also a great way to make
sure that you keep them connected to you. I mentioned that earlier. And your website also should steer them to
relevant information that they are looking for. So again, I’m saying them, them,
them, because I want to encourage you to put them in the spotlight.
And
finally, inspire them with success. So you are sharing the success that
you’ve had, in an attempt to inspire them that they can be part
of it in the future. So how do we instill that trust in
organizations, especially when we are online and there’s a lot of fake information out there?
There are several ways that we can do that. One way is to talk about whose already
on board with your organization. That is who endorses you? Who supports you?
Who funds you? Do you have mentions in the press that can show hey, we have a third party
endorser here, as well as excellence ratings, CharityNavigator, Better Business Bureau,
greatnonprofits.org. All these types of websites are great to help endorse you. And
finally, your website should show that you are transparent about everything,
that you are not holding things back, or covering things up. So I encourage
you to really think, get serious about this whole trust issue.
So what is some information you need
to gather about your potential readers? These are just a few suggestions to get you
going in that direction. Think about their values. Think about what problems they are trying
to solve and what goals might they have that you can help them with. And finally, especially if you are dealing
with an issue that is not very well understood, or is kind of under the radar, I encourage
you to think about what they already know, or what they don’t know, or what they believe
about your work, or what they might not believe. And that kind of goes into
the category of misconceptions. So sometimes we have to kind
of deal with those issues, and a website is a great opportunity
to offer all kinds of information, and ways to encourage people to see
things from a different perspective. So that’s another idea that I encourage you
to do when you are thinking about your readers, and you are gathering the information
you need for focusing on their needs. So let’s move on to planning
number 3, key number 3. So we looked at number one
which was focus on the brand.
Then number 2 was really focus on
the needs of your or specific readers. And then planning key number 3, the
final one, is to think about the benefits that you are offering as
opposed to just the features. Now what do I mean by that? Let me
explain it as concisely as I can. When we talk about features, we’re talking
about programs, components, or characteristics of what you offer. Usually it’s the services
that you’ve got going in your organization. Okay, so if someone were to ask you what
you do, you are probably going to answer with those features. But I’d encourage you to
dig a level deeper than that into the benefits.
That is how do those programs, services,
features improve the lives of your clients and community? How do they
satisfy their needs and desires? Let’s look at a few examples
of what I mean by that. So benefits answer these basic questions.
What does your work mean for your clients or community? What’s in it for me and
us? Notice that in business it is all, what’s in it for me? But in the nonprofit
sector we say, “What’s in it for me and us, the community.” And I
like this middle one here. For each feature you offer ask, “So
what? Who cares?” That’s a really tough, sometimes that can be really tough
to answer, but it is really important throughout all of your work,
all of your communications work, specifically on your website.
So what?
Who cares? So let’s look at some examples of what that looks like. So here is an example with a homeless
shelter. They have standard features that you would expect of a homeless shelter.
And then you think about the benefits, the “So what? Who cares?” or the impact.
And I have just listed a few of them here, higher level of nutrition and stability, higher
level of employment, fewer families living in cars or on the street, the sense of being
in a community that cares for everyone.
Those are starting to answer the questions,
So what? Who cares? And those are key questions that people coming to your website are
going to want to know the answers to. Here’s another great example. I like this
one from an organization called Slow Food USA. You may have heard of it. This actually
comes from their mission statement. They say in the first part kind
of what they do, their features. And then they asked the question,
“so what?” They actually say “ so.” And the word “so” can help you
answer that benefit question “ so that together, we can ensure equity,
sustainability and pleasure in the food we eat.” So this is a great example of
going into that “So What?” question. I’m just going to give you a couple minutes
to think about what might be the answer to your “So What?” question. What is the ultimate outcome, result, or benefit
that your community gets from your program? Take a minute to think
about that and type it in.
Becky: Lots of interesting responses, and we
know you can’t read them all in the back end. But we’ve got examples like, “We
provide literacy classes and tutoring so that adults in our community can gain
independence, have a better quality-of-life and improve their education.” “Every student has the
opportunity to imagine, create, and realize their full
potential through their lives.” “We create the curriculum and
assessment tools so you don’t have to. Just read the scripts and
start teaching right away.” Those are just some examples that
I read from the comments coming in. There is also, “So orphan children
receive an education, enough food, and clothing, and a safe place to live.” Lots of different types of org’s that are chiming
in in the back end here, arts organizations, libraries, K-12, lots of community-based
nonprofits, small businesses, so lots of input.
Dalya: Excellent. And just as I’m seeing
this scroll here in the chat window, I see a lot of people using the word “so”
to answer the question which is excellent. I don’t want to just know what you do, but
I want to know why it makes a difference. And you can use that “so” word to
answer that “So What?” question. So Bravo everyone. You’re really moving
that direction. And I’m glad to hear that because it will be so very important
to use that kind of thinking when you start working on your website. And this is just one more reminder,
whenever you talk about your programs also list the “So What?
Who cares?” benefits. So that was my little, very brief spiel
about those 3 planning keys for your website. Now we are going to move into the
next section which is some specifics about how to increase your usability
and accessibility for your website.
So I’m just going to kind of go through
rapidfire here. And again, as Becky said, you will be receiving these slides. So the first tip I have for you
is go from the “we” to the “you.” And remember I said a little while ago
that we want to make the user be the person in the spotlight, not the organization. So we
are going to move from the “we,” the organization, to “you,” the reader. And
here’s an example of that. So in the original we have “we” want to
bring native plants back to our community but we need your help. Who is
the focus of those 2 sentences? Obviously, the organization, the “we.” Let’s flip it around, and
have the focus be the reader.
“You” can help improve our city’s
environment. Plant and save native plants. They bring many benefits to our community,
and help avoid eco-trouble down the line. So the focus of those few sentences is “you,” or
the reader. And the secret here is the word “you” can really help you. If you start thinking in
terms of “you,” kind of having a conversation with your reader, you can start
thinking about how can I frame the things from their point of view. Here’s another great little
trick when it comes to that. You can think about using the word
“imagine” or just the concept of imagining, what it would be like to be in your organization
from the point of view of one of your users. Let me just give you a
minute to read through this. And if you have a
reaction, please type it in.
Becky: Well, we do have some comments
coming in saying it’s a little long, or maybe we would want to break
these paragraphs into shorter chunks for easier scanning. But then also, some
people are saying it’s powerful imagery. Another person saying it sounds a
little bit like an advertisement. So some different
perspectives coming in on this. Dalya: Yes. It’s very interesting when I use
this example with groups around the country, I get a whole wide range of responses. And
that kind of goes to something I said earlier which is the importance of knowing who your
readers are, and what is of interest to them, what they want to get out of your
website. So this appeals to some readers and doesn’t appeal to others. That’s okay.
So this is something that you might want to test, or this kind of thing might be something
that you would want to test on your website, or test in a focus group or something like that
to see how it lands with your target audience. In terms of its length, it is a little
bit long. You might want to chop it up into 1 or 2 sentence segments.
This actually
came from a website called guidedogs.com. And they apparently found that it worked
well because they decided to use it on their website for quite some time. I was just encouraging you to think
about this exercise of “imagine,” thinking about how can I encourage
my reader to imagine him or herself in the story of my organization. I would like to point out this little
heat map. This is from useit.com and they’ve done a lot of research on this.
The red and yellow areas are where users spend the most time on a website. So we’re
noticing obviously, on the left-hand side kind of the beginning of things. The
upper left though is where you want to put your most critical information, so the
first 2 words of a sentence or paragraph.
It’s the top of the page as opposed
to requiring them to scroll down to get that critical information. I just
wanted to kind of impress this on you, this red and yellow area, that’s where you want
to get your juiciest information to your readers. Kind of along those lines, the first
56 or so words are the most important. And for those who are familiar with
the inverted pyramid style of writing, that is often a good idea on the web,
that’s when you put the conclusion first, and then the supporting facts
and the details later on.
And that’s because, again, your website
readers have short attention spans. They are looking at the beginning of
things. They don’t want to scroll down to get the juicy information. So you want to summarize your main
point here, focusing on benefits, remember, not just features. So the big
benefits and the big problems that you solve. And you want to tell what the page is about and
why they should read it in your first few lines. That goes back to the very beginning of my
presentation that people are very interested in those 3 questions. What are you about,
who is it for, and why should I care? Very important on the web
is chunking your information.
So you want to use easy
to understand categories. You want to make sure you are
using subheads as much as you can, because again I mentioned this earlier,
people are interested in reading your subheads. They may not read the text, but
they want to read the subheads. Actually, your subheads should
provide enough information that if people were just to read the subheads
for them to know what you are trying to convey on that webpage. If you have a list of 3 or more items, I
encourage you to number it, or bullet it to make it easy to scan. And if you’ve
got a juicy quote coming out of your story to see if you can highlight that or
feature it in some way on the site, because people are drawn to those kinds of
things as opposed to just a block of text. Focus on your headlines. Headlines
are important in newspapers but they’re super important on the web as well.
It goes in terms of headlines and subheads. These are just some thoughts about
headlines. And you know, I want to make sure that we get to the web review so I’m not
going to read through all of these slides.
I’m going to just point out some highlights.
Okay, now we are moving into kind of the SEO, or the search engine optimization sort of
section here. One big part of SEO is keywords, that is words that people will type
in when they are looking for something related to your organization, or your
issue. I encourage you to use those keywords as much as you can throughout your site,
preferably 2 to 3 times on a short page, and more times than that if it is a longer
page. Call them out with bold, italics, or links. A good resource for keyword research
is Google or wordtracker.com. What is the ideal sound online? How do I want
my tone to be? I want it to be conversational. And this goes back to what I said
earlier that it is really about “you,” you are talking to you your reader. So I going
to start to write or think in terms of “you” and “your.” It’s okay to use sentence fragments
or be a little bit more casual online in tone. I encourage you to sound like a
savvy best friend, so you are smart but you are not intimidating, and you are
easy to understand.
So if you have to choose between being clear and being clever,
definitely think about being clear. If you’ve got blogs on your website, and I highly
encourage you to have a blog on your website, then the writer’s voice is going
to come through because your blog is probably going to be
written by more than one person. That blog gives your writers an
opportunity to express themselves and use their personal point of view.
So if you do have blogs, I encourage you to let the writer’s voice blossom. Of course, websites use links a lot and
sometimes people don’t use links very clearly. These are some best practices
when it comes to using links. You want to send the reader to
important background information instead of kind of having it
all there in one massive block. You want to send people else where
to find that background information or to explain unusual terms. Links help to emphasize important
information. They’re kind of like bold in terms of calling out things for people
to follow up on, or to really focus on.
These are some ideas in terms
of using links strategically. Include a brief description of just a few
words when you are thinking about using a link. If you have a vague link like “more info,” or “click
here,” it doesn’t really give your reader a sense of what they’re going to get when they
click there. So I encourage you to have more informative links. For example, “learn
more about the latest report on climate change,” and then you make that
phrase into the link. Another example, “list of foods high in
calcium,” so you would have it in your sentence and you would just make it a link as opposed to
just making it a “more info” or “click here”link. Calls to action or CTAs are super
important when it comes to web copy. These are essentially – a call to
action is pretty much what it says. It’s an effort to get your readers to
actually engage with you in some way, to take action as opposed
to just reading your website.
So whatever it is, whatever that action
is that you are encouraging them to do, make sure you are including all
the details they need to do it. Easy ways to do it is if there is a deadline
or special offer, make sure that is very clear. Remind them of the benefits, that
word again, remind them of the benefits that they are going to enjoy if they do act
now. And encourage them to make comments. That’s another great way that they
can engage with you on the web. Encourage them to use the comment section
below, below whatever website or blog you’ve got. Again, it builds community and
offers people a way to express themselves. I’m not going to go into these other SEO
tips because we are running low on time. But again, you will be
getting this presentation. I did want to mention just a little plug for
editing, because I think editing is super important.
On the web, if you don’t edit your
website, people are going to come to it and they may find it not credible, or problematic,
because it’s your representative on the web. So you want to make yourself look as good as
you can. I like this quote from Robert Cormier, “The beautiful part of writing is that you
don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.” Keep
that in mind. Make sure that your website is promoting your organization in
the most professional way possible. One great way to make sure that you are
doing that is being as concise as you can. Less is more. And I gave a few ideas
here about that.
I made up this acronym. I added an “S” here to kiss. Keep
it short, simple & and scanable. Tell them how to act right away and why.
Do those things we’ve been talking about. Your sentences should be no more than 10
to 14 words. 14 is kind of a long sentence especially on a line. You want to keep
it more like 10 or fewer if you can. It’s all about soundbites. See if you can
write in a way that is almost tweet worthy, almost like a tweet. It doesn’t
have to be that concise all the time, but you want to move in that direction. The
first 1 to 3 screens are the most important, so you want to make sure that you are getting
all of your juicy information right up there. And search engines like to have
at least 250 words on a page. So you don’t want to have super short pages,
but you don’t want to make them too long either. Just a reminder about proofreading.
I’m not going to go into that right now. Graphics, a super important
part to complement your text. And I like to say it’s not just a cherry on
top, it’s actually integrated with your text.
Make sure you are using photos and other
graphic elements that will enhance your text and draw your readers eye,
draw in your reader’s eye. One of the downloads that you have that is part
of this presentation is what I call a “swipe” file, actually not just me but lots of people call it
a swipe file. It’s basically an idea generator. It’s a list or a compilation of other
websites that you’ve found really interesting, or that you want to stay away from,
things that you don’t want to do, kind of reminders for yourself.
So it is an internal idea factory. And I offer you a starter for a
website as one of the downloads.
Okay, so let’s just take a look at a few
websites here, and then I’ll take a gander at some submissions. Change.org I like. This is
just a website that you might want to look at. Notice the quick text that they have here,
kind of a call to action, and nice photos. Then we’ve got nature.org, very
simple graphic here, almost no text, but the text that they
use is very impactful. Kiva.org is another great one, again,
with a short, short text, little snippet, and a call to action right there
“Lend Now” or “Browse all loans.” Do something, I like this one. My thing about
this one is, I don’t know if you can read the text there under “About Us,” but they know
their audience and they use the language that their audience would use.
So
that’s just a little heads up on that. Okay, so let’s look at some submissions
here. And what I’m going to be doing is I’m going to be talking about what I thought
was really great, and what could be improved. And I encourage you to do the same as I look
at them. So feel free to type in your thoughts about these websites as well. I think
I want to just start with this one. This is from a client of
mine. It is a work in progress. It’s called the Washoe Meadows Community.
And just a few things that I like that we are working on on the site,
in their “People” tab right here, before they had almost
no bios. And they decided, “Oh, we want to put some bios of our
folks.” And I encouraged them to do that.
I also encouraged them to have little
thumbnails here with a link to their bios further down the page. I’m a huge fan
of what is called “internal links.” These links that will jump you
down so you know what’s on the page before you even read through
it. On the “Campaign” page, here’s another example of it, they use these
subheads and you can click down to them. On their “Take Action” page they have a
flyer which is a really nice kind of summation of their work. And I encourage them
to use it right there at the beginning of their Take Action page to encourage
people to print out the flyer and use it. Notice their navigation bar
here, these links here at the top. Notice how there aren’t very many
of them. They kept them to a minimum, and they put them in the order that
they think people will probably use them.
So that was another tip that they used.
I like that they have a lot of pictures on their site, really nice. If you go
in their “Photos” they have a Gallery and they have really nice photos here. I
encouraged them, they haven’t done this yet, but I’d like to see some captions on these
photos so we know what we’re looking at. Let’s see, there was one other thing
I wanted to just point out here. Sometimes if we don’t proofread we get
things like this, here on the bottom where it says “Write Washoe Meadows
in” and then misaligned the memo line, that’s the kind of thing you
don’t want to have on your site. It makes you look pretty
unprofessional, so you want to make sure that you don’t have that kind of problem.
So let’s look at “The People’s Supper.” And it was submitted by Patrick.
I
hope Patrick is on the line here today. If you are Patrick, feel free to type in whatever
chat you’d like as I go through your site. I really like this site. I like the clean simple
design it has. I like the brief text snippets that it uses, an example there.
They have some nice calls to action. Let’s see, they have a form. They are asking you
if you want to be part of their email updates. And they have the social
media platforms right here. They encourage people to join their
dinners, suppers. It’s all about suppers. So they have a lot of calls to action around
that. Under their “About” they have “What//Why.” I really like that section. It really goes
into kind of the, not only the features, like this is for suppers, but it goes
into the benefits and why would someone want to do this. That was really nice. In their
FAQs, they are using a conversational tone, very nice. And it is very easy to use.
The one thing that I had a suggestion for this site, if we click on “We Agree.” First
of all, I didn’t know what “We Agree” meant when I saw the link, so I didn’t know
what to expect.
When I did click on it, it has 3 simple things that, 3 simple
commitments and I really liked that. I wanted to see that elsewhere on
the site, and I also wanted to see, and I thought the second one here
“I will show up,” and “be present,” that may need a little clarification. It
wasn’t quite clear what you meant by that. Okay, let’s look at this other site. Becky: We also got a comment really quickly
just to throw in there from a participant who said that the contrast on the menu
could provide some challenges for people, particularly if you’ve got a community, if
your audience consists of people which frankly, everyone’s audience consists of
people who may have vision challenges, or find it hard to read colors
that are not very high contrast. So the pale blue from the menu options
and that pale gray on the white background can be a challenge to read.
So keep
that in mind. And that came from somebody who is a former accessibility consultant. So I
think the more we can make our site accessible to everybody, the more they
will be accessible to everybody. Dalya: Excellent, excellent idea.
Thank you for mentioning that. And that kind of goes along with the whole
making sure that the graphical elements of your site really pop
and go along with the text. This site for Reach Out, Sherry is the
one who submitted it. I like the design. I thought there were some nice testimonials
on this page. You have to scroll down to get to them. Actually, I think it might
not be on the home page, it might be elsewhere, but I like the testimonials. I
like the Contact page especially. This site is a little bit slow to load. I
noticed that. Here we are at the Contact page. So we have all kinds of contact information
for all the different programs. I like that. My main challenge with this site
when I came to it for the first time, I really struggled to get the
answer to my 3 big questions.
What is the site about? Who is it for? And why
should I care? I really struggled with that. So I would suggest to really think about making
that as clear as possible on the home page. [Silence] Becky: Okay, I’m just going to come off hold
because I think that we may have lost Dalya. I think I have lost her audio too, so we will try
and get her back on if folks aren’t able to hear. I know she is still showing the site but I think her
line is actually cut off, so I apologize for that. She was giving some great feedback
I think, and input on this page. And we are actually almost at time,
so I am going to wrap us up here since I think we don’t have her back on the
line yet.
I know she’s showing another site, the Wisconsin Agricultural Education. You
will get all of the slides and resources that she shared including her swipe file.
So for those of you who want to look through all of the recommendations around
SEO and the tips that she shared, you can feel free to do that. I’m going
to stop sharing but many of you are welcome to go to the WisconsinAged.org website if
you want to see what she is showing right now as well. But I’m just conscientious of the fact
that she is not on the line to share those tips with us. So I’m going to stop sharing and take
us back out to her presentation really quickly. So we do, she did want to offer a special
discount for people who are interested in having your website reviewed.
If you are, she
does this professionally for lots of organizations and helps them, and regularly charges
$87 for a regular review of your website. If you’d like to do that she is offering a special
discount for the first 5 folks to message us to say that you’d like to do that for
$47 you can get your site reviewed. So feel free to shoot an email to
me, or chat in this chat window now if that’s something you’re interested in,
and then I can have those passed along to you. You can also email me at becky@techsoup.org
and I can pass those along. So feel free to send that our way, and we
will make sure that you can get an opportunity to have your site reviewed. And we
just wanted to point out this is where you can find her newsletter. Feel free to
sign up. We also have in our postevent survey that we'd invite you to take, an opportunity to
sign up for her newsletter through that as well.
We would love it if you would take a moment
and tell us one thing that you learned today that you find most useful. We are
skipping around in the slides a bit. I think she doesn’t realize we are off
the audio from her line cutting off. So I’m going to wrap us up. But
if you can let us know one thing that you learned during today’s
webinar that you’re going to take back and try and implement, we would really
appreciate it. Maybe it’s doing that challenge to try and frontload your sentences.
Maybe it’s taking a moment to try and rewrite your home page content to be
between 10 and 14 words long and no longer.
Let us know what things that you are
going to help to try to do to improve your web copy today. And we
would also invite you to join us for TechSoup’s other trainings that are
coming up, including our course catalog which you can find at techsoup.course.tc.
So feel free to check out the other courses available. And then starting next week we
have a bunch of other webinars coming up and other events that you can
find; Combating Nonprofit Burnout: Managing Tech and Email Overload, Libraries
as Innovation Hubs: Community Driven Design. And then we will be talking about IT Staffing,
who can you call when you need IT help, and How to Access Tech
Donations and Resources. So with that, I’d like to thank you
all so much for participating today. And I’m sorry we lost Dalya here at the
end. I’m not sure what happened to her line but we appreciate you all being
on. Feel free to look in your email. You’ll get a follow-up email from me later
today with the full slides and recording that you can refer to
at your convenience. Thank you all so much, everyone.
Have a great day.
Bye-Bye..
