Category Archives: Content

Improving Introductions

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You might have read our post on Making New Year’s Resolutions for our Websites: mine was improving introductions to content. I’m going to expand on what this means in this post.

We’re often reworking existing content rather than writing from scratch. And because of this it’s easy to get lazy and not bother to rework the introduction. The concern is that because it looks a little bit different, that’s enough.

Image showing the difference between a page title, introduction and body text.

Our introduction is styled to look different to body text.

The introduction style is a new feature of our responsive design. It follows the title of a page and is a larger font size to help highlight it. It also comes with its own content standards, it should:

  • summarise the point of the page
  • be no more than 50 characters
  • be descriptive

Working out if your introduction is any good

I’m inspired by Ida Aalen’s approach to this on the Gather Content blog about Testing the Usability of Text (particularly your introduction).

She suggests putting a copy of your content into word and printing it out. You then fold the paper so only the title and introduction are visible.

Image of page introduction with content hidden - three questions that I think the hidden content might answer have been added.

Will this content answer the questions I’ve asked?

Next step, ask yourself (or your site users) to read the title and introduction. You should then jot down three questions that you think the content will answer.

Once done, you can review the page content and see whether it does what you expect. If it doesn’t, you can rewrite the page content or improve your introduction.

In this case, I’m pleased to say that the page answers the questions I thought of – view our content on the Memorabilia Shop.

Have a go

Do your introductions work for you? Why not try this out on your colleagues or site users to objectively assess your content? Let us know how you get on in the comments.

Related blog posts

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Expert Approval for Our Content Strategy

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Our team has successfully implemented two huge content strategy projects (Undergraduate and more recently Postgraduate) yet we’re always looking to improve our skills in this area. Lisa and I attended the latest Nielsen Normal Group (NNG) training on Content Strategy to pick up even more pointers.

We weren’t disappointed. It was a really inspiring and practical course, full of great ideas for techniques to help with content creation, and client buy-in.

We came back fired-up with loads of ideas to improve our processes and firm up our strategy – I left with a long ‘to do list’.

And the even better news? Turns out that by following the guidance from NNG and other experts in content strategy, we’ve done a fantastic job at the University, and we can take pride in what we have achieved so far.

Approval from the experts

Affirmation from a room-full of content professionals that the work we are doing is; absolutely the right thing to do to improve our websites, pretty advanced and even admired – followed by requests to share our best practice with others…well, wow!

It sure felt like a pat on the back from our peers that understand what we are trying to achieve, and a real boost to the team just when we needed it.

Top five tasks on our content strategy ‘to do list’

So, on to our to do list, here’s just the top 5…

  1. We’ve created a really good content strategy for Postgraduate – now we need one for the rest of the University
  2. Apply content strategy to our content strategy – pull out the top five principles and use them everywhere as keywords in our communications
  3. Create a University-wide tone of voice
  4. Use the results of our content audits in a more visual way to help colleagues see the benefits of our work, and the improvements made to usability, readability, accessibility etc
  5. Share Google’s outline about how to get good search results – and how we already do this in our content guidelines, and the training we deliver

Discover for yourself

If you’re interested in where we got our content strategy inspiration from – and more importantly why content strategy is so important for websites – there is a wealth of guidance available.

I’d recommend ‘Content Strategy for the Web’ by Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach. It’s a really easy read, and pretty much a step by step guide that has lived on my bedside table for many a month.

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Writing Plain English Does Not Dumb Down Content

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The difficulty we face as a University web team is a fear that rewriting content for the web will somehow ‘dumb down’ the message.

 “If we write in ‘plain English’ we’re in danger of making ourselves look stupid. People won’t expect this from a university”

 

“We’re writing for our academic peers: they understand the terms we use.”

We hear these sorts of comments a lot. If you are writing for a website you need to dismiss them right now.

This is not the content YOU are looking for

Anyone can visit our website. We shouldn’t be excluding audiences based on their understanding of English. Who are we to decide who can or can’t access our ideas?

Think about those students or (high-quality) researchers who may not have English as their first language. Don’t make it hard for them to understand your content.

What about those with dyslexia or those using assistive technologies (like screen readers) to access the site?

And hey, what about you, wouldn’t you rather read something you understood at first glance (even if you are a specialist in that area)?

Remember:

No one will ever complain that you’ve made things too simple to understand.
Ann Handley

Plain English and why it’s important

Plain English at Newcastle University

In our Writing for the Web training we introduce the idea of using plain English. We encourage our content editors to:

  • write clear and direct content
  • be concise
  • reduce (or at least explain) jargon
  • use simple words in short sentences
  • use the language of your reader

All of these things make reading online easier for our audiences. They are how to write plain English.

Plain English Campaign

There’s a campaign for Plain English. The problems of complex words and long sentences are found in all sorts of sectors not just academic circles:

  • marketing
  • business
  • law
  • sciences
  • medicine
  • government

The Plain English Campaign highlights areas where their work has had particular success.

What we don’t want is to be a recipient of the Golden Bull Award  – each year the campaign highlights the worst written communication they’ve seen!

GOV.UK

The public face of government information has been transformed recently. GOV.UK is clear, well-written and helps people understand complex information. They are huge advocates of plain English.

They’ve published a blog post on using plain English:  “It’s not dumbing down, it’s opening up“.

Writing to support plain English

We’ve written lots of blog posts on improving content – most have hints about using plain English in them:

Resources and articles

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Introducing Our New Website Media Management Training

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In our team update from 1-14 October you will have seen a mention of a new module we’ve added to our Go Mobile training: Website Media Management. We developed this in response to requests from the first cohort of Go Mobile editors for more help managing images.

Our training on planning and writing web content, and using the T4 content management system, cover some of the ways images can be used in the new template. The new media training takes things a step further. It covers:

  • when to use images
  • sourcing images
  • selecting images
  • preparing images for publication
  • best practice for documents
  • uploading assets to T4’s Media Library

Sourcing and selecting images for your website

The primary source for images for your website should be the University photo library. In the library you can:

  • browse or search for photos
  • save relevant images to your lightbox so you can easily find them again
  • download the approved University logos
  • access student profiles

In the training we cover some tips for getting the most out of the photo library. These include using multiple lightboxes, browsing by keyword and viewing all photos from a selected photographer.

When it comes to selecting images, we provide guidance on how to select images for the four core themes identified in the University branding guidelines; student experience, sense of place, teaching and learning, and research.

The most important thing for image selection is to choose photos that are natural or appear to be observed, rather than staged. That means nobody looking directly into the camera!

Editing images for use on the web

We recommend that our editors use the free, online photo editing tool, Fotor. Its clean user interface makes it easy to upload, crop and resize images to the required dimensions.

Even if you have access to Photoshop, if you’re not a regular and proficient user it can be overwhelming. Fotor is a straightforward alternative.

I wrote a post earlier in the year that includes advice on editing images for use on your website.

Feedback from attendees

There have been three sessions so far, with more to follow in December. The feedback has been very positive:

‘Great information on the use of appropriate images in terms of context on the web page’

 

‘Really useful advice on when to use images and how to select the most appropriate ones’

 

‘Good to get practical, hands-on opportunity to edit and save images’

 

Further information

For Go Mobile editors, you’ll find lots of guidance on using images on our demo site.

Not yet part of the Go Mobile programme and want to improve the imagery on your website? Get further information from the image guide on our website (University login required). This includes a step-by-step guide for using Fotor.

And I’m always happy to take questions in the comments.

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Decluttering Your Website: How to Prepare for Go Mobile

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As we embark on phase 2 of Go Mobile, eager editors across the University are asking when their site will be going through the process. We’re thrilled that our editors are keen to get started.

We’re still finalising the schedule for phase 2. In the meantime, there’s plenty you can do to prepare your site for Go Mobile. In fact, the more you do beforehand the easier the process will be.

Delete, delete, delete

One of the most useful tasks you can do to prepare for Go Mobile is to delete any clutter from your site. Delete old versions of documents, images and logos that you’re no longer linking to in your content.

Similarly, delete old news and events items that are no longer relevant. If this information is still needed, rework it. For example, you could write a review of an event that has already taken place.

Check the currency of your content and consider whether it’s still relevant.

If content is out of date and no longer relevant to your site purpose it’s best to delete it. For more information about how out of date information can harm your website read Jane’s blog post: Why Deleting Old Stuff on Your Website is Good.

Check the accuracy of your content

It might seem like a dull task but ensuring that your content is accurate is crucial to the credibility of your site.

Users will be less likely to trust what you say if your content is littered with spelling and grammar mistakes, or if a link leads to nothing but a dead end. As pointed out by Kara Pernice from the Neilsen Norman Group, a link is a promise.

Tools like Siteimprove can help to find broken links and misspellings on your site.

Improve readability

The easier content is to understand the more accessible your message will be to your target audience.

Online readers are more task-focused and tend to scan content rather than read it all. Smaller screens increase this behaviour. So it’s essential to optimise your content for a smaller screen so that users can understand your content on any device they view it on. Part of this involves deleting unnecessary words.

For advice on optimising content for mobile take a look at our top five tips for writing for the web. An effective tool for identifying the readability of your writing is the Hemingway Editor.

Source new assets

As you’ll find out when you attend our Website Media Management training, images need to be larger in the new template. This is so that they retain their quality across all devices.

The majority of images that currently exist on your site won’t be big enough to work in the new template. Sourcing the original images will therefore give you a head start for when your site goes through Go Mobile. Check our Go Mobile Demo site for an idea of the new image sizes.

Go Mobile is an opportunity to check that your imagery is effectively supporting your messages. For guidance on sourcing imagery read Jane’s blog post on improving your website images and videos. For advice about editing images read Emma’s post: Editing Images for Use on Your Website.

Insights into Go Mobile

Find extra tips from editors who have already been through the Go Mobile process in our series of guest posts. Fiona Simmons from the Institute of Social Renewal talks about her experience of Go Mobile. Ivan Lazarov from the Press Office shares his reflections on the Go Mobile training.

Summary

So that’s a whistle stop tour of how you can prepare your site for Go Mobile. The most helpful thing you can do is to review your content. Make sure it will be readable on a mobile phone and delete old content and assets that are no longer relevant to your messages. Go forth and declutter!

Get in touch

Let us know in the comments if you have any questions about preparing your site for Go Mobile.

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