Writing for the Web 1: Foundations of Web Content

• Amsterdam: Thursday, April 26
• Washington D.C.: Thursday, May 17
• Sydney: Wednesday, August 15

Janelle Estes
Hoa Loranger

Full-Day Training Course

What’s in a word? Users approach online information differently than information contained in print media. Learn how to capitalize on this difference with some simple but powerful rules. Our research shows that rewriting text according to our “Writing for the Web” guidelines often doubles the usability of a website or intranet, and drastically increases the success rate for effectively communicating key messages.

Attend this tutorial to discover how your choice of words influences the ways users navigate to — and around — your site. Learn to use words online to entice and educate users, and to more effectively convert them into repeat customers.

Course Outline

• Reading and scanning behaviors
  • Reading in the real world
  • Reading online
  • Findings from our eyetracking studies
• Writing for your readers
  • Understanding your audience and using personas
  • Identifying goals for your content
  • Reading levels and low-literacy users
  • Creating accessible content
• Rules for Web writing
  • Guidelines for effective communication
  • Writing for fast comprehension
  • Content chunks
  • Writing for people and search engines
• Optimizing page content
  • Page titles
  • Headings and subheadings
  • Summary text
  • Body text
  • Lists
  • Links
  • Callouts
• Dealing with organizational politics
  • Integrating content strategy into a development process
  • Repurposing print documents for the Web
  • Creating a style guide
  • Justifying the re-write
  • Testing your content

Format

Full-day tutorial encompassing lectures, video highlights from user testing and eyetracking, and exercises. Real-world examples are used to highlight points throughout the day.

Course Materials

Copies of the presentation slides

Who Should Attend

This session is intended for anybody who communicates online; 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. The course will, however, cover some basics before delving into more complex issues.

Related

This course is a companion course to Writing for the Web 2. 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.

Instructors

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. Presenting in Amsterdam and Washington D.C..

Hoa Loranger is a Director at Nielsen Norman Group and heads the San Diego office. Loranger has consulted with many large, well-known companies in such areas as finance, customer support, intranets, e-commerce, entertainment, and technology. She has conducted international usability research worldwide and has given keynote presentations and tutorials on a wide range of topics, including user testing, paper prototyping, and fundamentals of Web usability. She coauthored the book Prioritizing Web Usability (New Riders Press) and has written reports on design for Flash-based applications, investor relations, “about us” pages, B2B websites, location finders, and teens. Before joining NN/g, she served as human factors lead for Intuit’s Consumer Tax and Small Business Division, where her group was responsible for user-interaction and visual design for the TurboTax product line. At TRW (now part of Northrop Grumman), she specialized in both hardware and software systems, including navigational applications and computer configurations in military vehicles. Loranger earned an M.A. in human factors and applied experimental psychology from California State University, Northridge, and a B.A. in psychology from University of California, Irvine. Presenting in Sydney.