Online Copywriting- Manchester Seminar December 5, 2007

People treat websites - and the information they contain - differently to any other media. Two simple facts:

- Most people decide whether they want to stay on a webpage in under 1 second
- Over 75% of people don't read webpages, they scan them - picking out individual words and sentences.

The online environment is perhaps the most challenging marketers have yet faced. Your audience are more demanding and fickle than ever. They have to be convinced to stay, and even once they have decided to invest the time to 'scan' your page, you need to make sure your page gets across your message as quickly and effectively as possible.

Studies have consistently found that WebPages which follow best practice for online copywriting outperform those which don't by over 100%. This results in pages:

- Convincing people to read them
- Effectively communicating their message
- Staying in the audience's memory

The basic tenants of online copywriting are well-known: pages should be concise, easy to scan, and well-structured.

This one day workshop will present well-proven techniques to improve the quality of your online copywriting. All such principles will be demonstrated, with follow-up individual practical exercises and group-discussion.

By the end of the day, you will be able to significantly improve the readability of your own WebPages and explain to others how they can improve theirs.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
Aimed at anyone involved in preparing or editing copy for corporate websites/intranets or email communication, this is an intermediate course.

Course contents

Legibility – making text easy to read from a screen as possible (including iTV and PDAs).
Layout – communicating your page's topics and structure Logic – making the content of your communications easy-to-understand Language – choosing words and sentence lengths/types which are appropriate to your audience Types of writing – looking at particular areas, including: Email Newsletters, Search engine optimisation & Accessibility Tone of voice – A step-by-step journey through the issues you have to bear in mind when defining, developing and delivering content in a specific ‘tone of voice’.

WHO IS THE WORKSHOP LEADER?

Tim Fidgeon, Author, Trainer and Consultant

Tim lives and breathes usability and copywriting for the web. He’s been involved in several award-winning projects over his 7-year career and regularly writes and publishes research articles on all aspects of usability. He’s passionate about making the Internet better, because he sees it as his way of making the world a better place!
One of Tim’s growing interests is ‘e-inclusion’ – specifically, how websites can be designed to support users with learning difficulties and low levels of literacy. He strongly believes that no-one should be left behind in the digital revolution.

Tim writes regular articles & white papers that have been published by, amongst others:

.net magazine
Businesshighlight.org
E-consultancy
Netmag.co.uk
New Media Knowledge
Usability News
Web Standards Group

Official Website: http://www.e-consultancy.com/knowledge/events/1451/online-copywriting--manchester-seminar.html