People read for two reasons - for information, or to experience. No, this is not a recent revelation about the interactive web. It was observed many decades ago by Louise Rosenblatt, a famous scholar who studied how readers relate to text.
This wisdom should be taken to heart by anybody who communicates with customers and prospects over the web. For everything we publish, we need to ask ourselves what our readers are looking for. Does she want facts about a specific problem or issue, or to get a feel for how people are dealing with that problem? Does he want to see our price list, or to get more familiar with us as a company?
These two agendas call for very different writing styles. For fact seekers, we need a detached, neutral style, often enhanced with bulleted text, charts and tables. Our reader will be saying "get to the point, please." For those seeking experience, we need to tell stories. Our readers want to be seduced. This means a more personal style, and a narrative that transports the reader from point A to point B.
A good website should do both. What a lot of websites do, however, is confuse the two. Often we're trying to seduce readers when they just want the facts, or we're boring them with details when they're looking for an engaging read.
One of the keys to a good site is to be clear about our intentions, and make sure our reader has a positive experience with the materials we present. When we present a case study, we should present the whole story with no interruptions. When we present hard concepts, we should keep it crisp and to the point. The site should be organized and notated so that the reader can quickly find the facts or experience he or she is looking for.
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