Words Make the Web Work

During the web development process, people often jest that nobody actually reads copy on the web; they say the words don't really matter. Unfortunately, they are usually only half-joking. It's true that many people skip quickly over written words when perusing a website. However, this does not mean that they do not read. It probably means that people have pretty highly tuned mechanisms that help them identify "junk" copy. This allows them to cut through all the noise that clutters our information inundated world. I give people more credit. I think they do read, but I think they have become experts at scanning and finding what is compelling in the midst of lots of chaff. So consequently, it's my opinion that the reason many people say that nobody reads on the web is because it's true. They don't read much on the web, but that's because most websites aren't saying very much!

Throughout my years of web development, I have learned at least one hard and fast rule: when companies plan on building a website, they always underestimate the job of writing and editing its words (notice I did not use the term "content"). Whenever someone asks me how long it takes to build a website, I have a hard time responding. We've built huge sites in a matter of a few weeks and we've built fairly simple sites that have taken over a year to complete. Guess what the x-factor is. Yup, it's the words. In the abstract, planning a website is relatively easy. Our grayscreen prototyping process is highly effective at detailing the structure, content (there's that abstract term again) and the functionality of a site. Our whitescreen process allows our clients to easily enter all of their "content" into the site during development. At this stage, projects frequently grind to a halt. Suddenly, all of the horribly abstract "Lorem ipsum dolar" placeholder content sprinkled throughout the site needs to be replaced with actual--gasp--words!