By David Stein
People tend to think of the world wide web primarily as a visual medium, and it’s not hard to understand why. Not only do we "surf" it on screens that increasingly resemble televisions, but the technology for delivering visual images and their accompanying audio are making it easier to have a television-like experience sitting in front of your personal computer. Businesses have jumped in droves on this multimedia bandwagon, filling their web sites with animated graphics, streaming audio, streaming video, java applets and more–all intended to impress viewers as much with the level of technical sophistication the company can muster as with the nature of the information being delivered.
Such technical wizardry definitely has its place, and if you can afford it, and it’s appropriate for the kind of web site you have or want to develop, then go for it! Too many people, however, become so enamored of the web’s multimedia capabilities that they lose sight of a fundamental reality: The entire Internet–from search engines to URLs to each individual page of your web site–is built around written language. If you have or are planning to put up a web site, you have more in common with the publisher and/or editor-in-chief of your local newspaper than with the producer of the local news.
Obviously, however, unless your web site is news oriented, your responsibilities are quite different from those of a newspaper editor. Journalistic integrity, for example, is not something you need to worry about if what you’re trying to do is sell plumbing supplies online. On the other hand, just like the newspaper editor, you do need to worry about the quality of the writing that appears on your site. Most basically, the writing needs to be grammatical, but you also want it to be appropriately and consistently styled, and you want it to reflect the values of your company. More importantly, you want the text to accomplish what it is intended to accomplish. If you have an e-commerce site, you want copy that will persuade people to buy; if your site is an online brochure, you want the text to motivate viewers to call or email you.
Getting words to do what you want them to do is no easy task, which is why I encourage my clients to work with a writer. Hiring a writer will increase the up front cost of developing your site, though how much will depend on who the writer is and what you want him or her to do. Nonetheless, the value he or she will bring to the development process justifies spending the money. Not only will you get copy that more likely than not accomplishes what you want, but a writer brings a valuable perspective to an editorial concern that runs much deeper than the quality of the text people who come to your site are supposed to read.
Remember that search engines identify your site based on the words they find there, starting with the URL and moving down into the site’s bowels, where meta-tags, keywords, file names and other information is stored. The system you use to label the components of a site needs to be consistent, tightly organized and broad enough to reflect both the way you understand your business identity and how users are likely to look for you on the web. A writer can help you devise such a system as part of your site’s editorial development, helping to keep your name both in the search engines rankings and on the screens of the market you want to reach. And after all, isn’t that the point?
Next month we’ll take a look at some things you should consider when hiring a writer.
David Stein is president of Automatic On-Line System, a full service web design, marketing and maintenance company. He can be reached at (718) 361-3091 or by e-mail at internetdoctor@autoonline.net.