Part 2: Answer – give visitors answers to their questions

Fabian has just become a parent and wants to understand how the childcare queue works. Should he put his newborn child in the queue now? Can the child get a place at a preschool close to home? Does he have to wait in several queues or is there a central queue for both municipal and private preschools? He googles and finds the website How the childcare queue works. Here he hopes to find answers to his questions.

Fabian is goal-oriented, just like most of us in his situation. And we don't look for answers by reading from the first word to the last. Instead, we jump back and forth, skimming, scanning headlines and bullet points, looking for the exact information we need.

The job of the web editor – empathy and the art of writing

Hopefully Fabian has now landed on the right page – the headline suggests so. You could say that Fabian and the municipality agree that this is the website he should be on. Now Fabian just needs to find his answers and understand them. So your challenge as a web editor is to:

• think of Fabian's questions, and follow-up questions
• present the answers to the questions in a way that is easy to understand
• use simple and understandable language, so that Fabian understands (even if he is reading on his phone with a colicky baby in his arms).

Think about what questions visitors have

Find out as much as possible about the visitors. Use your own imagination and empathy to put yourself in their shoes. Ask your colleagues for help, or perhaps acquaintances who are potential visitors. Talk to the people who answer questions from your target group: customer service or the municipality's citizen service. What are the most common questions? What is it that your visitors need to know?

Clear structure – most important first

It should be easy to find the most important information quickly. Think like this for the whole text and in each paragraph:

• Start by answering the most common questions. Take the more unusual questions further down the page.
• In each paragraph: answer the intended question first, preferably with a short, summarising sentence. Then you can add explanations and background.
• Put extra important information in bullet points – this makes it easier to find than in a mass of text.

Good subheadings provide answers

Once visitors have confirmed they are on the right page, they often scroll down to find the specific information. That's where informative subheadings come in handy. Feel free to phrase them as questions or answers to the questions you know your visitors have.

With good subheadings, you empower your visitors. They can sift through and see where the answer is. But they can also quickly find out what the answer is, because it's already in the subheading. Feel free to write When you have been offered a place – reply within one month instead of Offered place.

Simple language makes it easier for visitors

Keep your language simple and understandable - these tips will go a long way:

– Use direct address and make the sender visible. Write ' you' for the visitor, ' you' for groups including the visitor and ' we' for yourselves. For example: Here's what we need to know about you and your partner before you get married.

– Be clear about who does what, especially what the visitor should do. Use the form of an invitation and avoid passive verbs. Write We are assessing your application rather than Application for a place is being assessed.

– Do not complicate sentences. Vary between 10 and 25 words per sentence to get a good flow. Read longer sentences aloud and you'll notice if you've unnecessarily complicated things.

– Clarify the connections. Make sure it's clear why things happen and the order in which they happen. Use linking words like therefore, because, first, next.

– Use words that your visitors understand. Avoid old-fashioned words and internal jargon Explain technical terms unless you are writing to specialists.

Look up – what's on other pages?

A web page never comes alone. There are pages all around: above and below in the structure, and alongside. What information can and should be found elsewhere? Think not only about what is important, but about what is important right here and right now.

Often the web page is part of a flow, where the next page is a logical continuation. Your task is to put the right information on each page and guide visitors between pages.

You can read more about this in the final part of our blog series, which is all about guiding. In the first part, we talked about the art of confirming that visitors have arrived at the right place.