Your Most Important Page
By Debra Torres You’ve just created a beautiful home page for your department’s site, and you’re feeling pretty confident about it. The page has targeted, web-friendly text that follows the Liberty University Voice and Tone Guidelines and even has a compelling call to action. You’ve done your job, and you know that as people land on your home page, they’ll have everything they…
Feature vs. Benefit-Driven Copy
By Debra Torres People search for benefits When we search the web, we often seek information, products, and services that will benefit us by answering our questions, solving our problems, or healing our pain. In short, we use the web as a tool to help make our lives better. For example, just yesterday my husband…
Formatting 101
Image Alignment By Kari Barton and Tricia Mieden Images are a great resource to add to any page, but some things should be considered when placing the image. The way an image is used on a page can either distract the user from the page’s content or enhance what is already there. Here are a…
Writing For The User
Taking out the “we” word. Not too long ago, my mother stopped going to the hairdresser she had been using for years. Telling me about it, she said that her decision had nothing to do with the woman’s abilities. “She just talks about herself all the time,” my mother said. “She never asks me about…
Page Titles And Headers
Web page titles and headers have a simple but important function. They tell readers and search engines what the page or section is about. That part’s pretty simple, but there are a few tips that will make your page titles and headings better. Page Titles The page title should briefly and accurately describe the purpose…
Understanding Keywords
To make your web page more findable, it’s important to understand how and where to use keywords. A keyword is simply a word or phrase that describes your website, web page, or document. It’s what someone would type in a search box if they were looking for your content. You can make your page more…
Using The Editorial Style Guide
Not sure if you should use “theatre” instead of “theater”? Do you know if it’s “East Campus” or “Campus East”? You can find the correct terms and their descriptions in the Editorial Style Guide. The Editorial Style Guide is the official source for: Grammar and spelling Liberty-specific terms and phrases Term descriptions and requirements of how…
Headings
Part 2 in the series: Making Stuff Better We’ve all used the heading styles in the toolbar editor. But I thought I’d tell you a little more about them so you know how to use them effectively. Headings are great for communicating to the user. Not only do they describe a section of content, but…
A CMS Is Not Enough
Part 1 in the series: Making Stuff Better WordPress is a particular type of tool called a Content Management System, or as they are commonly referred to, a CMS. CMS tools are very useful – you, the users of WordPress, do not need to be able to handwrite your html and CSS or even be…
Links Matter
I was reading an article this morning by usability expert Jakob Nielsen, which discusses the importance of being careful and intentional about what your links say. You can read the full post (First 2 Words: A Signal for the Scanning Eye), but I’ll also sum up here: If there is one principle that’s the most…