When people read a website they use links to jump from place to place, creating their own narrative reflecting their interests at the moment. This is quite different from a book, which is structured into sequential pages.

Effective web copy supports this new way of reading: it's mostly newspaper style, with a heading and a summary coming first and information arranged in order of importance, that progressively adds detail. After any significant story point there may be an optional exit, to pursue the flow of that story rather than staying with the original.

Web copy must be sharp, especially headlines and intros, because surfing implies very short attention allotments.

How long should it be?

It is a serious mistake however to assume that web copy should be short. Copy should be as long a it needs to be to tell the story and not a word more, but overly-short copy will cripple a website.

This is because people are mostly looking for information. They surf with a short span when they are sifting through pages of search results, but when they find what they want, they stop and read as much as they need to solve their problem or reach a decision – whether to buy, for example.

The key to writing for the web is to facilitate quick searching, while guiding the interested reader to as much information as they want.

Nobody reads...

It is true that nobody will read a long paragraph about something they aren't interested in, but cutting that para down to three words won't make them buy either.

People will read a whole book about something they are interested in, providing it's all good, condensed information – not waffle or fluff.

So, people who are not interested won't read, people who are interested will read as much as they need to make a decision.

If you cut out information you will be pandering to the needs of people with no interest in you or your product and penalising people who are interested and want to know more.

See How long? and How long on line? and, for interest, Direct mail (the proven principles that drive direct mail copy also apply to the web).

A Glide Strategic we specialise in writing websites based on the belief that:

The purpose of most websites is to persuade. You want visitors to do something. Pictures attract attention and convey emotion, but persuasion is what words do. A designer may think words are an impediment to an aesthetically pleasing website, but they are the primary stepping stone to your actual goal: to get someone to do something.