All Writing the Web posts

Would you rather – some sales or more enquiries?

When I was a kid we had a wonderful and slightly disturbing book called Would You Rather? by the brilliant illustrator John Burningham. It was fun choosing between supper in a castle and breakfast in a balloon, but there were also more alarming choices: which wild animal would you rather be killed by? Everyone knows that good kids’ books need a dark undertone…

The would-you-rather that Fluent comes up against repeatedly with clients is: would you rather have some sales or more enquiries? Usually the question relates to the hiding of key information. Tell prospects everything and they might not buy. Conceal something vital and they’ll have to get in touch.

For example, in the hunt for more bookings, one hospitality client is being tempted to remove the availability calendar. The reasoning is twofold: first, that an empty calendar might scare people away; and second, that forcing an enquiry form request gives the company an opportunity to sell alternative dates or holidays if the original dates are not going to work out.

Google’s own guide to content that rates highly

Confession time. I work with website content every day but I don’t think I’ve ever stuffed a keyword. Sure, I’ve added the odd one to the final copy if the subject doesn’t quite speak for itself, but in the main, a website is about what it’s about. I’ve been relying on Google to lead people who are searching for that subject to the site.

And, in nearly all cases, that’s been happening.

According to Google’s recent update, my faith in this simple approach will now be rewarded even more.

Spelling mistakes: were you going for rude or inept?

When I first started working with web content it amazed me that people could merrily create web pages with spelling and grammar mistakes on them. It just seemed like a basic consideration that you would ensure that you had spelled things correctly – and not a difficult one to achieve.

Talk about naïve.

Web and site, a love story

Once upon a time, there was a dashingly important word named Web. He was from an affluent family of capitalised words, the World Wide Web, who had come to prominence in the 1990s. He was the shortest of his brothers, but with a W—- just as handsome, he still garnered many admirers. The three nouns [...]

40 writing tips, both quick and dirty

Admit it. Every now and then you want to read ‘how-to’s in a dirty long list. And every now and then I want to write them.

So here you go. 40 tips for writing well, on the web especially. Happy Christmas.

Estate agent poetry misses the point

This new-to-the-market blog post comprises of a charming argument against writing poetic property descriptions, leading to the sought-after conclusion that people prefer facts. The post benefits from some delightful subheadings and convenient access to illustrative examples. It is deceptively spacious and lends itself to retweeting. Not suitable for children or pets. On the one hand, [...]

Clichés are not rocket science

‘Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.’ Is Orwell right to make this rule? One recent blog post on clichés, This metaphor aint dead, it’s just restin’ claims that writing without ‘dying’ phrases is in fact unattainable; and even if it wasn’t, the results of such [...]