Writeyness :: Info to snack on

I mentioned it before (here), but it’s worth stressing again. On the Web, less is very much more.

I often review and edit existing copy for clients. And it’s amazing how often you can edit 10%, 15%, sometimes as much as 75% of the copy down without hurting the tone, readability or messages of the piece.

In fact, the message becomes more powerful as a result.

So it’s good practice for online writers to make a habit of returning to each completed draft and slashing it by at least 10%.

Long and short copy on many websites — especially ecommerce sites — can benefit from a trim.

Find your main point, get to it quickly, and get on with the job of building your credibility and selling the benefits of your products or services. Then get back to your main point, stress the benefits once more, and ask for the sale, the phone call, the “click.”

Of course, there’s a lot more to successful online copy — long or short — but that, in a nutshell, is what it needs to accomplish.

Talking of free wireless (“Provide free wireless and they will come”) this is a handy site for finding free wireless hotspots in your area. Just plug in an address and you’re away…

Free-HotSpot.com

I’ve set up office in a variety of places before. Coffee shops, back decks, parks, airports and railway stations. But never in a baseball stadium. Until today. The Vancouver Canadians have joined the wireless revolution — offering free access on game days — and are actively encouraging people to bring their work to “Nooner” games. (They insist the boss will never know.)

I’m not the world’s biggest baseball fan, having been brought up with the faster, more intense and headbutt-laden football (or soccer, depending what side of the Atlantic you’re on). However, a sunny Friday afternoon game at the Nat Bailey stadium — a great little vintage ballpark set in Queen Elizabeth Park with some of the most scenic views Vancouver has to offer — is as good excuse as any to take the Canadians up on their offer.

Of course, the spread of wireless access is another big driver of the Internet boom, along with low-cost home computers and the growth of broadband worldwide. It’s just another reason to get your business online sooner rather than later.

Anyhow, one of the Boise players has taken a tumble going for second base — so of course the theme to ER is playing — and those hot dogs smell good…

A month on, I’m still experiencing World Cup withdrawal symptons… sometimes involuntarily waking up at 7am on weekends (when the games were televised here in Vancouver) and going downstairs anyhow to click through the TV channels in the desperate hope of a glimpse of a bouncing football… other times listening out for the blast of an airhorn or muffled cheers from the pubs and cafes around town that would signal a goal.

All in vain.

I also miss all the World Cup blogs, so, to help me through this difficult time, I return to their cached pages now and then. My favourite piece of World Cup writeyness is this excerpt from the New York Times World Cup blog after a Germany win:

“Last night, in Cologne’s Heumarkt, i sat tensely watching the home side go goalless until the 91st minute when, miracle of miracles, late sub oliver neuman netted one, putting the Germans through to round two, the first team to advance. Depending on the feed, certain bars had a few seconds of delay, which seemed to work roughly south to north heading up the plaza.

“When Neuman scored, the roar traveled up the plaza like an aural wave, germans unleashing 90 minutes of drunken, sausagey tension upon the city, Koln transformed into a spontaneous orgy of singing, dancing, flag waving, beer spilling and pole climbing. You have not lived until you’ve seen the host country win on an injury time goal the night before a bank holiday. I think they’re still celebrating.”

“… sausagey tension…” — great.

I’m a bit of a newspaper junkie to be honest, to the point that I’ve bought foreign-language ones in other countries, despite not understanding a word. (By the way, other newspaper addicts should check this site out… www.newseum.org)

However, as I covered in the previous post, this obsession does come in handy in my current work — in this case when it comes to writing good online headlines.

A newspaper headline has to identify the essence of the story and summarise it within just a few words. Depending on your paper’s style, you may also be allowed to get creative and indulge in a little punnery or other wordplay.

When writing headlines for The Scotsman (see the previous post), I had to fit the headline within the alloted space above the body copy — for example, three columns across and two lines deep — and try to make it fill as much of that space as possible.

It involves a lot of word juggling and is no easy task, and it’s fantastic training for writing for the Web, where — because you have so little time to grab your visitors’ attention online — a concise, descriptive and eye-catching headline is an incredibly useful device.

An effective online headline should primarily:

1. Focus on the main benefit of your product or service

2. Be compelling and address the main problem faced by your target audience

3. Include keywords your target maket uses to search for information relevant to your site

Obviously it also has to make sense! So the trick is to find a delicate balance of all these elements.