The web is a terrific way to reach your audience. But it's important to remember that this new medium requires a specific style. Unlike a brochure, magazine, flyer or newspaper, the audience has a different expectation.

Below we offer some easy to steps to ensure your website is communicating with both clarity and creativity.

First step: Realize the importance of being brief.
Be brief. Reading text on a monitor strains your eyes and is unpleasant. The user tires easily. This is why we can't treat web copy like other mediums. For example, on the web, the user knows with a quick click they can find what they're looking for on another website. By quickly stating your point and providing convenient links to more detailed information, your user stays with you.

Lesson: When your point is buried, no one bothers to dig. Be brief and provide easy-to-find links for more information.

Second step: Realize your audience.
Speak in the same vocabulary as your target audience. If you're a financial site targeting private investors, do not use words, terms, acronyms that only an economic expert would understand.

Lesson: Talk to your audience in a way that does not insult them with simplicity or offend them with complexity.

Third step: Realize the difference between the messenger and the message.
When a prospective customer views your web site, they're bombarded with information. A web site's messenger can be advertising or banner ads. The web site itself includes graphics and Flash animation. The web copy, the format, the punctuation, the content, the style, the words are your messages. Sometimes with all those messengers, the messages get lost. Well-written, poorly placed words are ineffective. But so is graphically enhanced copy with grammatical errors.

Lesson: Make sure the message rings through. Both the messenger and the message are important.

Fourth Step: Realize the role of format.
The way we arrange the words is vital to their effectiveness. Good tactics: Subheads, bullets, headlines, clear icons, definitions, lists, graphs, two sentence paragraphs, semi-colons, colons, bold, italics. Each of these creates chunks of information and allows the user to locate their target quickly and easily.

Lesson: Use the right format to make your message readable and understandable.

Fifth Step: Realize how to be exciting and brief.
The web is not a passive medium, but an active one. In fact, it's an interactive one. As a website, we're looking for both a reaction and a reply from our user. To engage them, web writing requires a direct device.

Converse with the user. Rather than "I sell pens," try "Can you imagine life without pens?" This direct device also demonstrates the benefit of pens, rather than simply stating you have some for sale.

Lesson: Use a direct, conversational writing style to begin and maintain a connection with your user. Offer the benefit, not just the product.

Source: "Effective Web Writing" by Crawford Kilian. Also special thanks to Andrea Enright for editing and compiling.