writing, and the hierarchy of website needs
Posted by phillip Thu, 25 May 2006 10:45:00 GMT
i just visited the tazo site, originally to find out if i could buy their tasty (if somewhat americanized) chai directly and loose, instead of from outrageously expensive starbucks, by the bag.
when there however, i had to think of an article i read on a list apart recently – Calling All Designers: Learn to Write. i agree with the article (and a friend that came to the same conclusions on his own), and will pay more attention on future projects.
i’ll collect a couple of examples of well written sites. i already have tazo, skype and photojojo (the site mentioned in the ala article). of course flickr qualifies as well. i’d add apple, too.
i have some concerns though:
the copy has to be really well written to stand out, and consistent. otherwise most people just won’t notice the difference.
it requires closer collaboration of the client, copywriter, designer, site producer, etc. something that in todays loosely coupled, freelancer-based way of creating websites rarely is a reality, at least in most larger projects i have been on so far.
just as in design and user interface, the purists would argue that the best copy is the one that doesn’t draw attention to itself but “just” lets people use the site perfectly. so how to write depends a lot on the kind of site being built.
good writing will probably only happen on sites with a somewhat larger budget. hiring a copywriter (or putting more effort into the copy oneself) adds extra costs. for multilingual sites, you’ll need one writer (or a native language translator) for each language.
so taking care of good writing is on one of the higher layers in the “hierarchy of website needs” (see here ;-). from bottom to top you’d have (not limited to the following):
that the site actually is “there” and can be navigated
that the information it provides is useful
good usability
a beautiful design somewhere at the middle …
… and good copywriting would be just next to design, one layer below or above it
the building layers would be different depending on the kind of site created, as well as the layers’ order. i think the pyramid is a good way to visualize the blocks that go into building a great site. although in some places there won’t be a strict order, but a cloud. to some extent great writing can make up for a plain design. in the article mentioned above, Derek merges these two traditionally separate layers into one.
i think the fact that we’re paying (more) attention to copy now shows the web development discipline maturing. a couple of years ago, we were still concerned with the lower layers, today we got more routine with that, and the worst browsers have finally left the building anyways. so we can concentrate on the higher layers.
on a side note, i think that’s one of the benefits of the ruby on rails framework. it allows us to concentrate on higher layers. using it, the lower layers don’t require as much brain power, time and dedication, so we can pay more attention to the higher ones. that’s something you notice with many rails sites – they don’t just work, they are nice to use and look at as well.