Hi Claude,
My background is online (site development, particularly magazines) and I can think of a number of reasons why online copywriting should be treated differently.
Speed - because it is more difficult to read online and consequently people read much slower (Jakob Nilesen’s reserach suggests 25% slower), you have to make the text work harder than you would in print to achieve the same effect. Because it is harder to read online, and people have to scroll, it is more difficult to skim text, the structure of the page should account for this. People reading slower means they read less, which means you need to get the point across in fewer words.
By the same rationale people will only read shorter pieces in full, the recommendation is to break the text into several relavant pieces using good anchors, rather than one long journal article - you have a higher chance that more people will read the relevant section then. Research suggests 80% of people will not read a journal article in full online, most will scan, and print it to read it if they are interested, the pages and sections of a longer article should therefore be structured to enable scanning, different use of titles, different use of bulleted lists, putting the point of a paragraph first, packing the 'viewable area' on each page etc http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/62/online_reading_survey.htm (interestingly different content types and length have very different reading patterns).
Context - online people click back and forwards and scroll up and down seeing only a limited part of the page at any moment, they do no have the same context that they do in print (to other pages, articles etc). The copy online needs to give that context, a title, for example, should work out of context (more on that below). Research suggest that people spend more time orientating themselves online (part context, part quantity of search results, part navigation structure) this means a quick verification is required to reassure the user thay have the right page / information (accepting they cannot skim as effectively), the structure of the online copy should support that reassurance (better, clearer contextual anchors etc), this is why shorter paragraphs, more titles that are more descriptive are recommended and packing the 'viewable area' at the top of the page.
Site structure - people do not have the same sense of context when online (as in a magazine, with its clear sections and index), they look for titles, verbal cues and relationships with other content to give them context and endorse the content. Consider that people do not navigate a site 'top-down', they do not start at the front cover like they would in a book, most users will be deep linked to an article from a search result (which in itself needs careful language consideration), ideally the structure of the article would reassure them of the page significanace (consider deep linking into the middle of a book chapter, for example).
Hypertext - and words as labels (not just hypertext), they are a navigational contruct online and should be given very careful consideration - teasers are ofen used as navigational constructs from home / section pages, for example. Likewise people will not actually 'read'an article until they are staisfied they have the right content, and they identify that in a completely different way to print, it therefore requires different treatment.
Search engines - use algoritms to analyse page copy, keyword density, word proximity, use of headings, titles and styles to determine content relevance. In order to gain position, and therefore enhance traffic these should be given consideration, consideration one would not make in print.
Would be very interested to hear other people’s opinions on this, especially if people have research in the area.
angus
Angus Phillipson
WORKSsitebuilder
W:
www.workssitebuilder.co.uk