What are your goals?

The first step of the writing process is determining the goals of your website. This is so easy to overlook but is very important. What is the purpose of the website? What are your goals? More specifically, "What action do you want visitors to your website to take?" This may seem obvious at first but websites can specialize in many different things. Some common goals are listed below:
"I want people visiting to my website to..." Get information about me, and call me Get information about me, and fill out an online form which will come to me in an email Buy my products View upcoming events with my online calendar Download my brochure so I don’t have to mail it to them Find directions to my store Make an online donation Stay updated on what’s new with my company Register for upcoming events View my portfolio As you can see, you can have multiple goals for your website. When you write your content, remember to constantly drive people to take these actions.

Who is my audience?

Think about who your typical customer is. How old are they? How computer savvy are they? What is their education level? These are good questions to ask. Remember that web users do not read words on a website, they scan them. Therefore you will want to write your content in a style somewhat similar to a newspaper. Short paragraphs, headlines and lists are the best way to allow your user to easily scan your pages.
A very common mistake made in content writing for websites is to make it too informal. While you don’t want to sound like a college textbook, you also want to sound professional. If you are a small business you want your website to appear "top of the line" to compete with the larger companies. A website is a way to enhance your image. Take advantage of that and make your web content as professional as you can without being stuffy.

What information do I want on my website?

The next step of the writing process is creating a site map. A site map is simply an outline of what the information on your website will look like. Each item on a site map represents a single webpage. It usually consists of 5-7 main categories, with sub-categories falling underneath. The reason for sub-categories is to organize the content in a way that is easy for the web user to quickly glance over and comprehend.