Writing for the Web 2: Presenting Compelling Content

  • Amsterdam: Friday, April 27
  • Washington D.C.: Friday, May 18
  • Sydney: Thursday, August 16

Janelle Estes
Full-Day Training Course

Does your writing sell? How persuasive are you?

The Web is a large place. Attracting and retaining people’s attention is more difficult than ever before. It’s not good enough to have a passable website, it must shine. This course will give you practical techniques on how to capture your audience’s attention by using one of most powerful tools online — words.

Course Outline

  • Voice, tone, and style
    • Defining your voice
    • Formal vs. informal writing styles
    • Storytelling
    • Addressing multiple audiences on the same site
  • Customer care and credibility
    • How users learn to trust
    • How to keep that trust through good content
    • Presenting corporate information
    • Building relationships through customer care content
  • Homepage
    • How to encourage links
    • Creating a homepage that has value
    • Trends: dos and don'ts
  • Landing pages
    • How to increase conversion
    • Understanding the user's decision process
    • Common pitfalls
  • Structuring complex content
    • Presenting detailed content
    • Displaying large documents
    • Strategies for layering content
    • Page length and scrolling
  • Alternative ways to present information
    • Information graphics
    • Images and captions
    • Videos and slideshows
    • FAQ
  • Social media
    • Facebook and Twitter
    • Blogs
    • User reviews/testimonials

Format

Full-day tutorial includes: lecture, video highlights from usability and eyetracking studies, exercises, and discussions. Real-world examples are used to illustrate points throughout the day.

Course Materials

Copies of the presentation slides.

Who Should Attend

If you communicate on the Web, this course is for you; Web designers, intranet contributors, online and technical writers and editors, usability engineers, sales and marketing professionals, and managers of these functions. Although there are no prerequisites, a general knowledge of Web usability issues and some general experience with writing are useful.

Related

This course is a companion course to Writing for the Web 1. To learn the topic in depth, we recommend that you attend both days, but each is structured to offer a complete single-day experience. If you need only the basics, attend the first day, or for advanced material, choose the second.

Instructor

photo of Janelle Estes Janelle Estes is a User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. She works with clients in a variety of industries and presents regularly about usability methods, email newsletters, writing for the Web, and the user experience of nonprofit websites. She has been the primary researcher on and co-author of several NN/g reports, including email newsletters, transactional email messages, donation usability for non-profit and charity websites, and social media. Prior to joining NN/g, Estes was a research associate on the Customer Experience team at Forrester Research, where she was involved with many research efforts related to user experience and user centered design. Additionally, Estes has worked as a user experience consultant with companies across many industries, including retail, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and telecommunications. Most recently, Estes worked at Chordiant Software as a Human Factors Engineer in an agile development environment. Estes holds a BS in Information Design and Corporate Communication, and an MS in Human Factors in Information Design, both from Bentley University.