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Web Content - Text, Graphics and Animation

The look and feel of your Web site conveys a message about you and your organization. Present text and imagery that carry clear information about your products and services.

Text and Copy Writing for Web

Internet visitors who view your site as readily accessible and easy to understand will stay long enuogh to read about your products and services. If you include information that useful and frequently updated, they will come back again and again. Observe these guidelines when writing text copy for the Web.

• Visitors like summaries and the inverted pyramid style
  Present summaries and conclusions up front. Allow viewers to read details and background information later if interested.
   
• Text should be scannable
  Scanning saves time. Use headings, bold or highlighted text, bulleted lists, graphics, captions, topic sentences, and tables of contents to enhance scanning.
   
• Writing should be simple and informal in style
  Make it quick and easy to read. Visitors want to get information quickly, without having to read every word
   
• Text should be concise
  Break long pages into shorter, multiple pages to avoid excessive scrolling and overwhelmingly long pages.
   
• Users like well-organized sites
  Make important information easy to find.
   
• Credibility is an important
  Qualify your sources and yourself. Motivation and trustworthiness are important on the Web.
   
• Outbound links can increase credibility
  Hypertext is well-liked, but too many links can be distracting.
   
• Humor should be used with caution
  Know your audience, use humor to make a point.
   
• Graphics and text should complement one another
  Graphics that add nothing are a distraction and waste of time.

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Graphics, Animation and Streaming Media

Using graphics

Branding
Your organization's logo should appear in a consistent location on every page. We can optimize your logo for the Web, taken from your business card or letterhead, or we can design something new that conveys your organization's identity.

Enhancing Page Layout and Information
Graphic images can make Web pages pleasing to look at, enhance the visual organization and credibility of information. Visitors like fast loading graphics and pages. They also prefer a choice to download slower, complex graphics. Provide a small, thumbnail preview of large graphics with a hyperlink to view an enlarged version in a separate window.

Avoid clutter

• Visitors avoid graphics that look like advertising.
• Artwork different from the look and feel of the site looks messy.
• Graphics for decoration can distract or confuse your message.

Animation and Flash

Animation that illustrates a concept or explains a complex action can quickly get your point across and reduce the amount of text on a page. Brief, explanatory text accompanying animation greatly improves the visitor's understanding. User-controlled animation, with stop, start and pause, allows viewers to control their experience.

Although animation is often time consuming to produce, the extra benefit of animated graphics to illustrate a point can make your site, and your business, memorable. Avoid using animation just to draw visitor's attention. It soon becomes an annoying distraction.

Flash is a specific form of animation designed especially for the Web. It produces a detailed look unlike that of standard Web images, with more motion and graphic sublety. Done correctly, Flash will download without wait times and produce an interactive experience for your customers.

Streaming Media

Your Web site can offer audio or video on demand. Save time and postage by directing customers to your Web site instead of mailing music demos CDs. We can convert CDs and video to stream from the Interent.

	Berceuse (flute and guitar) by Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) Edited by James Baird Courtesy of BairdGuitar.com.
Sample of CD-quality audio in streaming in MP3 format.

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