Fix-It Friday is a new series of posts where I show how a website page can be improved by applying a few web copywriting principles. My primary aim is to make visitors’ lives easier.
Within just an hour, it’s possible to make a page more readable, accessible and search friendly. I also explain what else I’d do if I had more time. Look at the difference a web copywriter can make!
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an independent, not-for-profit and international organisation. Its aim is to improve ‘the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas’.
I’m going to look at the WEF’s ‘Social media: Twitter’ page from a web copywriting perspective.
- Web page before (image)
- Good points
- Could do better
- Web page after (image)
- Fixes made in one hour
- If I had more than an hour, I’d…
Web page before
(Click on the image for a larger version.)
Good points
- Individual <title> tags for each page
- Sub titles are used to break the text up
- Clearly describes what users can expect (including benefits) if they follow the Twitter feed
- Good number of links to both internal and external web pages
- The page URL is descriptive
Could do better
- Header tags (H1, H2, etc) haven’t been used for title and sub title elements
- The text is wordy and dense in appearance
- Copy would benefit from better formatting
- Key phrases need highlighting in <strong> tags
- There doesn’t appear to be a “description” or “keywords” element
- The <title> tag could be tweaked to greater effect
Web page after
(Click on the image for a larger version.)
Fixes made in one hour
- Simplified the language — ‘plain English’ (considering the WEF’s global audience)
- Improved the order, layout and presentation of the copy
- Placed all titles into appropriate header tags
- Added additional sub titles to break up text
- Added further links from key phrases where appropriate
- Highlighted other key words and phrases in <strong> tags
- Placed suitable information into proper lists
- Moved the image and added a greater margin
If I had more than an hour, I’d…
- Write “description” and “keywords” tags
- Review the <title> element
Note: Within the copy, I did not change ‘organized’ to ‘organised’ because this appears to be the WEF’s house style.
Do you want me to make over a page on your website? If you’d like to suggest a site for me to consider, get in touch!