The structure and composition of good website content

Okay, here we go, writing website text. You are about to put your proverbial pen to paper for the first time. Fortunately, you have done a lot of preparation and know what is important and why, which texts you need and how many words they contain. But at the crucial moment, you wonder, where do I actually start? In this article, we discuss the structure and composition of good website text. This will help you immediately to write your first website text yourself in a short time.

Writing good website text works best if you always follow the same process and aim for a certain structure. If you do that, the subject itself matters little. That every text has an introduction, body, and a conclusion or closing will be no news. But what goes in the introduction, how do I build the body, and what makes a conclusion? You know the subject of the text, which website texts you need have been discussed earlier, the next step is to map out your goal(s) and subtopics.

Goal(s), subtopics and website text

The goal is about why the reader reads the text and why you present it; a good website text is one that achieves both goals. For example, if we write website text about a product or service, your goal is probably to persuade (to sell) while the reader wants to make a good assessment. Make sure you have these goals clearly in mind, then it is easy to set up subtopics. These are the building blocks with which you achieve the goals. For this article, the goal is, for example, “enabling you to structure a text well” and our goal is “to radiate authority,” the subtopics follow from that.

Structure

Now that your goals and subtopics are crystal clear, let’s talk about the structure of the text around the familiar introduction, body, and conclusion/closing structure:

Introduction – You are still fighting for the reader’s attention, and the best way to do that is to grab attention and then be clear about why they should keep reading. The first lines are for grabbing attention; there are many different techniques for this (which we already discussed in another piece). The rest of the introduction is used to clearly tell that you understand the reader’s goal and will answer it.

Body – The reader knows they will get answers to all questions; now it’s a matter of doing this according to a clear structure. This is where the subtopics come into play. Try to discuss subtopics with overlap in the same paragraph, so each paragraph has a clear purpose, which gives you a handy check. Use headings to emphasize what is in important paragraphs (H2 headings are important for both readers and findability/SEO). Useful to keep in mind: don’t get bogged down in features. Translate these into benefits for the reader and provide evidence for this.

Closing/Conclusion – Write as briefly and powerfully as possible what you discuss in the article and what the reader gains from it. Spend the rest of the conclusion answering the question: What now? After reading this piece, the reader should be able to take action, whether that is reading further, calling you, or anything else. Be clear about next steps.

Based on goals, subtopics, and the above structure, you can write your first website text in no time. And that no-time is important here; don’t stop once you start writing, write a whole text, and only then make adjustments and rewrite. Believe us when we say this will save you a lot of time because when you have reached the end, you look at your text very differently than if you only have the introduction.

Writing website text becomes easier if you follow this process. By using this structure as a guideline and thinking about goals and subtopics beforehand, you ensure you don’t waste time with different versions and make writing much more enjoyable. You now know everything – together with the previous articles – to write the first texts for your website; let us know if you get stuck.

In the main article of In practice: writing website text, you will find the other topics we have already covered. Next week we will write about getting input from your own organization, input that is essential for substantive, good texts. If you want to talk to us further after reading this piece, then we would love to hear from you.