Text content

Much of your content may combine text and still images. Since visitors to your site may lose interest in reading a large amount of text on its own, you may want to consider strategies to make your content more interesting, engaging and easily skimmed for its most important points.

Writing for websites

To maximise the effectiveness of the text on your website it is usually considered best to:

• use headings and sub-headings
• write in short, concise sentences
• use the active voice – that is, someone/something (subject) performs an action (verb) with a result (object noun or phrase)
• avoid information that is unnecessary to the topic being addressed
• use bullet points and tables where possible
• incorporate keywords, highlighted hyperlinks and emboldened words to draw attention to key points
• keep pages short
• use graphics and visual devices where possible.

Copywriters

If you require assistance with this process, professional copywriters who specialise in writing for websites can ensure your text-based content is expressed as well as possible. When working with a professional copywriter, make sure that you hold the copyright over the written content.

Document types

There are different formats available for presenting text content on the web. Each has advantages and disadvantages and it is worth learning about them so you can choose those best suited to your situation. A web designer can give you specific advice on the best way to present your text content.

The most common and simplest format is to present your text content in mark-up language. Your website is built on this format. Using HTML may also assist in ensuring your website satisfies accessibility requirements.

However, HTML may prove cumbersome for long-form content or for material (such as a brochure or contract) that you want to preserve in a particular layout and appearance. Users set up their screens in many different ways, including screen size/resolution and colour settings, and so a single web page can appear very differently to a range of individual users.

One option for preserving the appearance of content to ensure it remains consistent for all viewers and is suitable for saving or printing is the Portable Document Format (.pdf) file type. Other popular file formats that achieve this are .rtf (rich text format) and .doc (Microsoft Word). Once you create such a file, you need to upload it to your hosting service and provide a download link as URL in the appropriate place(s) on your website.

 Apart from preserving formatting, providing documents for download means you need to create fewer web pages to make that content available.

While a plain web browser allows you to view static HTML pages, most web browsers support a plug-in to view .pdf and other embeddable files within the browser. Plug-ins are optional software additions that enhance and/or add functionality to a web browser. Individual plug-ins support various different file formats to give visitors automatic access to content in those formats.

Whichever file format you choose to use, you should remember to give consideration to accessibility. This is how visitors with hearing or vision impairment will experience your content, and whether users will have access to the same information regardless of the version of the software they use.

Documents created in .pdf are often inaccessible to users with assistive devices such as screen readers, while files created using Microsoft Word 2007 (or later versions) are not readily opened by users with Word 2003 (or earlier versions). For more information, please see the page on accessibility requirements.