Writing and Editing for the Web

Users visit your website primarily for its content, not for its technical brilliance, and the editor's role is crucial in creating and maintaining this content. This two-day course will provide guidance and techniques essential to keep users coming back to your site time after time. It will enable editors and writers to:

• provide online content in a manner that draws in readers
• edit text published in other media so that it can be published online
• understand the jargon that web designers and technical staff use.

You will gain insight into the capabilities and limitations of web technology and how to exploit these as an editor. From how to organise and structure content, to the details of writing and editing for an on-screen audience, you will learn how to develop a site that draws visitors in and keeps them coming back.

Programme

Day One

• Audience
  • The Web audience
  • Your audience: demographics, psychographics and technographics
  • Competitor analysis
  • Usability testing
• Site structure
  • Information architecture
  • Maintenance, updating and scalability
  • Page structure
• Connecting with readers
  • Finding the right style
  • Powerful weapons for web writers
  • Changing your perspective
  • Understanding your readers' missions
• Getting the words right
  • Boosting readability
  • Writing effective opening paragraphs
  • Things to eliminate
  • Writing key web pages

Day Two

• Links and interactivity
• Search Engine Optimisation: writing to be found
• Access issues
• Repurposing for the web
• Website critiques exercise
• House style guides.

Who will benefit from this course?

Editors, writers, publicity and marketing staff who have a responsibility for web content and site design.

Your tutors

Sue Davis has been a freelance web consultant for more than ten years. She has advised organisations including Channel 4 Television on editing for the web; designed websites for UNICEF, the BBC, Channel 4 and many other businesses and charities; and presented TV programmes about the Internet for BBC2 (Computers Don't Bite) and Sky TV (Download).

Nancy Duin is a freelance copywriter, editor and trainer. She initially worked for book publishers on a wide range of subjects, but later expanded her repertoire to structuring, writing and editing websites for television companies, businesses, and government agencies and departments. She is an editorial consultant to Channel 4 Television and internet director of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders.

Bev Legge has been a journalist and copywriter for more than 25 years, working for both printed and online media. As a journalist he has written for the Daily Mirror and The Guardian, as well as for a variety of trade, consumer and house magazines.

We also offerWriting and Editing for the Web 2,Search Engine OptimisationandWeb 2.0: Opportunities and Threats.

Note that most of our short courses can also be run as in-company events.