Thoughts on writing for the web?

I'm working on some guidelines (below) to help folks on campus tailor content on their web sites to their audiences. I'd love to get some feedback on it.
--Zack

WRITING FOR THE WEB

Before you sit down and attempt to craft the perfect words for your website, think for a second about how you read highway signs as you cruise up Interstate 5 to Portland.

If you don't follow some fundamentals for writing for the web, visitors to your site may pay about the same attention to your second paragraph -- or even your second sentence -- that you pay to the green and white sign telling you that there are a Newport Bay and McDonald's at the Kuebler Road exit in Salem. Unless you're in Salem and in the mood for a Big Mac or Halibut filet, you cruise right by at 70 mph.

It's up to you to whet your visitors' appetite.

Skim. Breeze. That's what an alarmingly high percentage of visitors to your site will do through the text you so carefully polished. Research shows that more readers than ever, and especially intellectual ones, skim through content at a pace much faster than they can actually read it. It also shows that you have mere seconds to capture their attention before they bounce off to another page.

Sound daunting? Don't be discouraged. It just means that you need to craft your message for the web carefully. Follow a few simple rules and you can slow people down long enough to hold their attention -- or better yet, convince them to pull in for more information.

Think bullet points.

Think quick.

Think concise.

Don't sacrifice accuracy.

Think simple, easy-to-understand sentences.

Think multimedia, video, audio, -- they're easier than you might think -- or even a simple photo.

How will you interact with visitors to your site? Will a blog work? Just asking...

You must be compelling and correct and, when possible, offer links to take visitors deeper into your site and information. The further they go, the more detail you can offer them.

Take, for example, the presentation of research. Rather the come at readers full bore with technical terms and a researcher's life's work, think simple, think about how you'd describe the research to your mother or your cousin, and assume they're not researchers. One suggestion is to pare down and loosen up an abstract. Then, if you want to describe the research in more detail, link to a pdf of a full journal article. That accomplishes two goals: 1) you reach a general audience members without scaring them off and 2) you provide more information for serious readers without making them feel as if you "dumbed down" your material.