![\"Lanyard](\"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/files\/2018\/11\/20181112_144301-e1542033994381.jpg\")
<\/a>Last week, I attended the UX (User Experience) Conference in London. The conference brought together people from different industries across Europe, all with a shared interest in user experience.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThere were the usual networking opportunities, but the main focus of the conference was the wide range of training courses covering topics like:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The conference was hosted by\u00a0the Nielsen Norman Group (NN\/g)<\/a>, co-founded by<\/span><\/span>\u00a0UX guru Jakob Nielsen. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see Jakob this time, having met him when I attended in 2016.<\/p>\n This year I attended the Writing Compelling Digital Copy<\/a> course. This was useful in reaffirming some of the practices I do in my role here at Imperial. It also made me think about some aspects in a different way.<\/p>\n With the course still fresh in my mind, I thought I would share a few top tips for writing digital copy.<\/p>\n When people use the web they are satisficers<\/em>. Don’t worry if you haven’t heard that word before, it was new to me too! It means that people will do just enough to get what they need from your web pages; they will scan and not read you pages.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the average webpage, users have time to read at most 28%\u00a0<\/span>of the words during an average visit; 20% <\/span>is more likely.\u201d<\/p>\n Jakob Nielsen<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n We can\u2019t change this behaviour, so to help them out we need to write in a clear and concise way. Breaking up the content into chunks with descriptive headings is a good way to start.<\/p>\n There are some great tips for some of these techniques in our top tips section of the web guide<\/a>.<\/p>\n If it\u2019s rude to say it in person, it\u2019s rude to say it in copy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Remember, you are not writing for yourself. Use clear plain language that your audiences will understand. Improving content for lower-literacy users will benefit\u00a0everyone. If you make people think or remember too much, you are making them work too hard!<\/p>\n One great quote from the course was:<\/p>\n \u201cThis is TOO easy to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n Nobody, ever<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n There are some great tools that can tell you the reading level of your content and some them are free. <\/span>Read more about this on my post:\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Useful tools for content audits<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(see <\/span>Readability scoring<\/em>)<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n These are those fluffy phrases that don’t add much to your copy. They include things like:<\/p>\n Sounds obvious, but people typically concentrate on the first couple of paragraphs of your pages and within those paragraphs only the first few sentences and words. You are actually doing that now as you skim read this post! This means you should always try to front-load your important information as much as possible. That way, your audiences are less likely to miss important information.<\/p>\n There is a fantastic Writing for the web<\/a> course open to all Imperial staff members. The course covers a lot of the things I mention in this post and much more. I strongly recommend.<\/p>\n I would also recommend attending the next NN\/g UX conference in London<\/a>\u00a0– March-April 2019.<\/p>\n A day at the UX Conference in London Last week, I attended the UX (User Experience) Conference in London. The conference brought together people from different industries across Europe, all with a shared interest in user experience.\u00a0 There were the usual networking opportunities, but the main focus of the conference was the wide range of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7269,278325,288788,39],"tags":[290360,290361],"class_list":["post-467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conferences","category-content-design-techniques","category-content-design-tools","category-training","tag-ux","tag-writing-for-the-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":491,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions\/491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
<\/a>Writing compelling digital copy session<\/h2>\n
7 top tips for writing great digital copy<\/h2>\n
Tip 1: Before you start writing, always answer the following:<\/h3>\n
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Tip 2: Write for how your audiences use the web<\/h3>\n
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Tip 3: Choose your tone and wording wisely<\/h3>\n
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Tip 4: Speak the language of your audience<\/h3>\n
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Tip 5: Test how easy your content is to read<\/h3>\n
Tip 6:\u00a0Avoid vague modifiers<\/h3>\n
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Tip 7: Put the most important content first<\/h3>\n
Want to improve your writing skills for the web?<\/h2>\n
Further reading<\/h2>\n
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