Creating Web Content
Content is still the fly in the ointment of so many websites. It seems like an insurmountable task to create it or, worse still, to cajoule it from reluctant clients. This book has a simple methodology for finding, creating, adapting and curating web content from the mighty homepage to the microcopy on a form field. It is written for people who create small to medium size web projects and is full of practical exercises, time saving processes and insights from beyond the web.
Table of Contents
Part 1 - Introducing content
- Your website sucks
- Giving content its due
- Practical tools for content creation
- Content as a process
- Big Content vs little content
Part 2 - Plan it
- Know your audience
- Know your content - audits for profit and pleasure
- Styleguides
- Styleguides for guiding authors
- Styleguides for style
- Workflow
- Designing with content will make you happy
Part 3 - Create it
- Writing - a cheat's guide
- Task based content and game design theory.
- Microcopy - the world's easiest adventure game
- Classic pages
- About
- Homepage
- 404/500
- Contact us
- Visual language and tricks of vocabulary
Part 4 - Care for it
- Healthy content is happy content
- Search - let's be friends again
- Leaving search engines to do the work is insulting to people trying to find you.
- metadata - the web's library system
- Testing and Tweaking
- out-of-context testing
- A/B and Multivariate
- user testing
- Content analysis is an ongoing process.
- Taking the lead with the content conversation.
Part 5 - Try it
- A practical content strategy in action
- Planning a personal site refresh
- Exercise for auditing
- Exercise for styleguide creation
- Possible content ideas
- Creating a workflow for new content
- Creating content for your site
- Exercise for about page
- Exercise for contact page
- Exercise for 404 page
- Exercise for microcopy / interaction copy.
- Conclusion - Rework, remix, refresh.