Web Standards and Accessibility for eiu.edu
Who is your audience?
Who is your audience? For many of you, that audience is prospective students. Remember that they are always the "me" on your website.
Don't try to write for prospective students ... and your dean and your faculty and your staff and your current students and your donors. You'll just end up diluting your important messages. And that makes the message less meaningful for everyone.
Always go back to your primary audience. Write for them and the messages they want to hear.
Prospective students don't care that some man they don't know named Bob just donated $10 million to your college. Let an internal email, your donor publications, and/or newsletter praise Bob for his amazing donation.
But on your website, let prospective students know that Bob's donation will provide 10 full scholarships that they can apply for to help them pay for college.
So, don't just give them meaningless facts, even if your dean or director says you have to announce those facts. They want to know why those things matter and... what's in it for them.
30/3/30 Writing For Your Website
In his 30-3-30-3 rule, Clay Schoenfeld suggests you present each webpage as if your audience will give you:
30 seconds. With a 30-second attention span, these folks are lookers. They’ll learn whatever they can through an image and a bold headline.
3 minutes. They’re not reading the text. Instead, they’re flipping, skimming, and scanning for key ideas. To reach them, you need to lift your ideas off the screen with a display copy.
30 minutes. These folks are readers, and don’t we wish there were more of them!
3 hours. These folks are researchers. They dive deep for data. Give them bottomless wells of information — libraries and archives of white papers, detailed product specs, PowerPoint decks, full texts of speeches and presentations, and so forth.
For the web, you need to write shorter, making each webpage as tight as possible. But you also need to deliver additional, longer pieces for your deep divers.
“Open with kernels for the 30-second reader,” write Daniel Cirucci and Mark Tarasiewicz. “Break to bits for the three-minute reader. Branch to detail for the 30-minute reader. Link to verbal and visual feasts for the three-hour junkie.”