Most professionals who have been in marketing for a while believe that they can write. So when the web came along its potential gave a whole new creative freedom.
... offer alternative paths through navigation to deliver tailored versions of text to different target audiences
At last they could pour even more copy in the direction of the customer at a fraction of the cost of putting it on paper … or so they thought!
None of us likes reading yards of text on screen - so the ‘publish everything’ philosophy should have been ditched long ago. But check out many leading companies’ websites and they are widely committing this sin.
On the web ‘less is more’.
It's a question of giving all the information your target audience needs - no more and no less. ‘Over egg the pudding’ and you lose your audience. You may even need to consider using other media instead and ask the question ‘should this be on the web at all’.
Creating different paths
One route around the resistance to excessive screen text is to offer alternative paths through navigation to deliver tailored versions of text to different target audiences.
For example, let’s take a veterinary product that is sold to both vet’s and farmers. Both audiences need to be addressed differently – even though the core information may be much the same. Copy can be tuned for content, style and depth of information and approach for both audiences.
Firstly, this saves individuals having to read or scan through irrelevant information intended for another audience. Secondly, it will reinforce their belief that the company really does fully understand their special needs and speaks their language.
It all makes more work for the working web professional - but the investment in your own time will save that of the reader and improves the customer rapport.