Web Write 101

A plug for my partnership with Web Editor Nancy Duin:

The Thing Itself (TTI) is a partnership skilled in web organisation, content, design and training. We specialise in:

• expert critiques of websites, to identify why they may not be achieving their aims and how this can be put right
• training in website writing, editing and structure tailored to each client’s needs
• combined critique and training that enables clients to identify where their websites are going wrong and quickly get their staff trained to rectify this.

We are also hugely experienced in writing, editing and designing websites that work, and can help clients focus on their users through scenarios and personas.

In addition, clients come to us for the creation and maintenance of email newsletters and for training in and consultancy on search engine marketing. Finally, we have on tap an impressive array of expertise in all areas of website creation – editorial, technical, aesthetic – to meet all our clients’ needs.

I seem to be doing a lot of public speaking over the next few months so I thought I’d share with you an excellent article I came across by Donna M, a web writer and information architect:

10 tips for conference presentations

‘Final Curtain At The Theatre Royal’ – featuring the poetry, music and art of Billy Childish, Lupen Crook and Oliver Burgess

Recorded at the Theatre Royal in Chatham a few days before it was demolished in May 2009.

21.36 minutes long.

Final Curtain at the Theatre Royal from Dave Wise on Vimeo.

Organising web content alphabetically is such an arbitrary way to do it. It is akin to random order.

As Jared Spool says:

Alphabetization is a lazy designer’s out — it tells me that the design team isn’t interested in finding out what users are really doing on the site.

Here’s an interesting debate between Jared and some defenders of alphabetical organisation.

Your job as an editor is to make sense of the information for the reader, to effectively ‘de-randomise’, to group the mass of site information and prioritise.

The Next Woman

OK, an example of a site where they order their navigation alphabetically is The Next Woman.

The Next Woman screen grab

Look at the top right navigation scheme. They haven’t prioritised or grouped the sections. Some are obviously editorial sections – Simone’s List and Female Hero of the month. But some are admin areas – Subscribe, Contact, About. Mixing them up feels wrong. For an online mag for female internet heros they need to find an information architect or editor who understands the web for credibility sake.

Twitter is all the rage at the moment with everyone from the NHS to Number 10 Downing Street using this tool to communicate.

But recently the tool looks like becoming useful for web writers. Until early May the only way to find out what people were ‘tweeting’ about was to go to Monitter or Twitter search. Now you can see instantly what the most frequently used words are right now, just by going to your own Twitter home page. read more »

Matt Cutts from Google has been collecting questions from the public for several months. Over the last month he’s been putting the answers on You Tube as videos. read more »

So what’s all the fuss about Twitter?

Well Google is in the early stages of a dance with Twitter’s owners. Looks like they may buy Twitter. There are about 60,000 tweets (single messages) sent every hour. Stephen Fry, The Guardian and the UK Government use it to send updates.

read more »

When organising a conference, agree a tag that can be used when delegates categorise their blog posts, slides, photos and videos. Then people will be able to easily find the related information later using tag searching sites such as Technorati. read more »