Guides, news, etc relating to web content.
FAQs are the dinosaurs of web navigation Gerry McGovern outlines some of the key problems with FAQ sections on websites, including the following: If information is frequently asked for, you really ought to focus on it…
Your content is a promise to your customers In another sign of how the web is changing everything, Gerry McGovern notes that Amazon has come top of a Harris reputation ranking in the US. When was the last time you ever…
The key difference between online and print publishing Gerry McGovern highlights why creating web content requires a totally different mindset to how we are used to creating for print. …in a print world you rarely have…
9 content tips to help you build a better digital service Gov.uk share nine content design tips. I particularly like item 5, something I have been advocating for a while: Don’t explain the interface – improve it One of…
Writing tips from the CIA’s ruthless style manual It is always fascinating to see how other organisations attempt to keep their writing consistent via their style guides. A good style guide is a mixture of common sense…
Print is view, web is do Organisations can sometimes forget that users normally come to a website to do something. The temptation is sometimes to cover the website with glossy images or screeds of happy talk. But this…
Interesting facts make webpages compelling Web users are task-driven and looking for information. They also dislike “marketese” and “happy talk” (or, as Jakob Nielsen calls it in this article, “blah-blah”). As such, it…
One link on Gov.uk – 350,000 more organ donors Here is a fascinating article from the Government Digital Service about A/B testing, where different users are shown different versions of a page so that you can see which…
It’s not dumbing down, it’s opening up Here is another great video from the Government Digital Service, this time outlining its approach towards using plain English throughout the website. The big one, and the one I…
On the web, context kills, speed saves Here is an article from Gerry McGovern about one of my pet peeves, happy talk. Web users are highly task driven, and they are not interested in our content attempting to set a…