Module Three. www standards.

The most important rules for Writing Online in my opinion are:

Summarise.
People don't want to read through half of War and Peace on the web page to get to
the point of the article. You can fill them in if they chose to read on.
Be concise.
Don't waffle on getting to the point eventually. People lose interest in long
dry article. Use one paragraph per idea and don't use superfluouse words
that aren't neccessary, like superfluouse.
Be Scannable.
Most people scan articles, searching for things of interest them. Use familiar word, that
you appeal to everyone, not just people who are familiar with the latest 'in words'.
Alter text style and use things like bullets to highlight your points or links.
Don't make them wait.
Most people don't like to wait for more than a few seconds so, for example,
use graphics wisely. Not to many and not too big. Keep download times to a
minimum.
Give them options.
For the purpose of printing, one long page is good. But when reading from a
screen, people tend to scan. So keeping the initial presentation snappy with links
to areas of interest, while offering the option of a printable version will keep a lot of
people happy. People in general, prefer to print out long articles and read them
off line.
Be organised.
Make life easy for the reader if you want them to stick around.

I arrived at the above conclusions after reading articles, mostly by Jakob Neilson.
With the massive increase in web traffic since the articles were written (1997), I feel his idvice is as relevant today, if not more so.