Writing Blogger

As soon as I was finished typing the headline above, I realized I probably should’ve asked the question “what makes a great Web page?” We probably all know, in a general sense, what makes for good Web copy — shorter, more concise copy, with plenty of headers and subheaders to break up blocks of text on a page, filled with search-relevant keywords.

That, of course, helps when you want to get your Web site seen by the search engines. But what makes an actual great Web page, from the point of view of the reader? From this writer’s perspective, I think having a narrative focus to the page is as important as it is when you’re writing a journalistic-style feature story.

It’s critical that each page have a “beginning,” “middle” and an “end,” in the same way that a news or even a fiction story does. You’re telling a story of what a business does, or how it solves a problem, and you want the reader to find your story compelling (or at least interesting, right?). To do that, your Web pages have to have a narrative structure.

In my next post, I’ll post some examples from clients I’ve worked with and other examples I’ve found on the Web… have to run at the moment!