Step 2: plan your website

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About the site's text...

Copywriting is an art that few are able to do well, yet there are some basic rules that will help anyone get a message across successfully on the web:

(1) Know your objectives. First decide exactly what it is you want the page or site to achieve. Now write this down and keep looking at it every time you get lost for words. Next, prioritise the points you wish to make and ensure that they are in line with your objectives. Now you can begin to write relevant copy but as you go, keep putting yourself in the place of the typical visitor that you are targeting, and ask yourself if the copy tells you everything you need to know.

(2) Keep it short and concise — if it is possible to remove a word, sentence or paragraph without diluting your message, always remove it. When someone is faced with a long page of text that they do not have good reason to read, they will usually just skip the page altogether. If faced with one or two short paragraphs however, they might just stop and read it. This is THE most important thing to remember when it comes to website copy — say what you have to say in as few words as possible.

Obviously, if you know that you have a captive audience that needs to read your copy, then you can afford to add all the detail you want, but otherwise aim to fit everything onto one short page that requires little or no scrolling. Alternatively, add secondary text by way of a styled 'inset box' so that the reader can see that it is additional to the primary message.

The article then details eight more tips for writing effective web copy

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About the site's structure...

Before you write the first word of text for your first page, you need to decide how best to 'structure' the information that you wish to publish. This needs to be done logically and in a way that visitors knowing nothing about your website and services will be able to understand.

Put yourself in the place of a visitor coming to your site for a specific reason and ask yourself if there is a logical path to the required information. For example, if you sell widget cleaners for a number of different widget types, how does the visitor find out which cleaner he needs for a particular type of widget? Is there a top-level button marked 'useage guide' leading to a list of cleaners showing which widget each cleaner is made for; or does the visitor have to trawl through the descriptions of each product, looking for the one piece of information they require?

As you solve each 'information communication' problem, move onto the next ...put yourself in the place of a different visitor requiring different information (like where does your visitor go to buy your products). Structuring information for a website (or brochure or catalogue etc.) is rarely easy and it might take a few attempts and tests with friends to get it right, but get it right you must if you want your site to do its job.

One of the simplest and most effective methods is to structure your site into something along the lines of: 'Profile' (who we are), 'Services' (what we do) and 'Products' (what we sell); or 'Profile', 'Big Widgets', 'Medium Widgets' and 'Small Widgets' etc. This would be called your 'top-level structure' and would be reflected in the navigation buttons on the top row.