Thank you for downloading Your Website is Ugly. I’ll bet you thought that I had exhausted all the ways to make your website better.
You thought wrong! I’ve got some bonus material here that can help you make your website be all it can be. Just like joining the army but without the matching outfits and standing at attention and stuff.
Let’s talk about how to make your website content easier to read
I know that some of you are authors, some publish magazine articles, some are technical writers and some of you are recently out of school. You have amazing writing skills. You know not to end a sentence with a preposition. You have chosen a side in the ongoing “Oxford Comma War”. You know when to use its vs. it’s. I’m a little in awe of you.
When it comes to writing for the web, however, most of the classic writing skills you’ve learned over the years are going to hurt you.
Writing for the web is not the same as writing an article
I’ll bet most of you are used to writing in nice, long paragraphs. You’re used to seeing big blocks of text. You’re used to creating big blocks of text. You quit reading picture books in grade school.
That’s all fine and dandy for a novel or a magazine, but this is the internet, baby. People don’t read web pages. They skim them.
You need to break that page up. This is the brand new world of one sentence paragraphs. You can get away with 3 or 4 sentences in a paragraph, but much more than that?
Start a new paragraph. Those big blocks of text make your website harder to read.
Headings are your friend
Mix them up. Heading 2 for really important points. Heading 3 for less important points. Heading 4 for things you want to stand out.
Never, ever use Heading 1!
Heading 1 is reserved for your page or blog post title. The search engines would really just prefer it if you only have one Heading 1 on a page, thank you very much.
Think I’m just making things up? Here is the same text. First, as my high school English teach taught me. Second as I would write it for the web.
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The web is a visual medium
You’ll need to re-learn some of your writing style. Fortunately, the web is not a fixed medium. Editing layout and wording is pretty easy to do.
Your ToDo:
Find one page or blog post on your site that has lots of blocks of text. Edit it into smaller paragraphs. Use a heading at least every 3 paragraphs.
Did you arrive here by accident? Why not sign up for the free eBook Your Website Is Ugly and get the entire series of bonus articles, too.
