Measurable data will give you a solid foundation for understanding your audience. If your site has a marketing department, those colleagues may be able to furnish you with their audience research, which will help you refine your own list of questions. Demographics and site traffic are often fruitful areas of inquiry, but investigate any audience information

Identifying an audience is like making a sketch of someone. You add eye colour, nose shape, hairstyle… and eventually the face appears. Don’t worry about getting the full picture all at once. Start with the questions you can answer definitively, then do your homework to fill in the most important missing information. You’ll be surprised

Your site’s content includes more than articles and marketing copy: Links, menus, and other site elements are part of the content mix, too. The clearer and more consistent the writing, the easier the site will be to use – and usability is key to keeping people on your site. Usability refers to how easily site

Even though you are writing for a specific audience, your actual audience may have a variety of characteristics you haven’t considered. For example, they may have disabilities that affect how they access and navigate your site; they amy also be older or younger that you realise, more or less proficient in reading comprehension, and more or

Help people scan for important information by breaking up text into digestible, interesting chunks. Meaningful headlines and subheadings break up a page of text by visually grouping related chunks of information. Avoid overly cute or clever headlines that may confuse or alienate visitors. Just say what the section is about. Well-written headings also help to boost

Readers assess webpages in an instant. Your content has a few seconds (three or less!) to encourage people to read more, to take action, or to navigate to another of your pages. Impatient readers will click the Back button in a hurry or will stop skimming and go to a search box. To get to the

Text that works best on the Web is text that gets to the point fast and that makes it easy for readers to pick out key information. Here’s why. A computer screen displays text at a lower resolution, with less detail and sharpness than a printed page, so letters are fuzzier. And many people feel