Engagement without interactivity

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Engagement and Interactivy

Jeff Williamson
Northern Virginia Community College
www.nvcc.edu/home/nvwillj/html-interactivity/
nvwillj@nvcc.edu

Engaging Text

There are a lot of ways you can simply write web sites to be more engaging.  Here are some ideas

1. Give directions - At some point you'll read that it's bad form to write "Click here." This is not bad advice, but not always helpful, either.  Compare Ask Jeeves and About.com.  In which site is direction needed more?

2. Use a voice other than third person - Compare Ask Jeeves and About.com again - which site has more second-person text?  Does this seem more inviting to you?

3. Use engaging mailto tags - Which of these looks more engaging?

Comments to webmaster

Comments? Questions? E-mail Jeff Williamson

You can also set your e-mail tags to specify an engaging subject line.  Beware that mailto: tags won't work on many browsers.

4. Use engaging forms  - Compare these comment forms:

NVCC Alexandria
Saveon Foods

Which is more engaging?  Why?

5. Write engagingly - How to write well is a topic for a lifetime.  However you should at least know a bit about how users read on the web.