YOUR
WRITING HAS ONLY 15 SECONDS
With the pace of modern business, you can count
on having only one opportunity to grab your reader. That’s about 15 seconds to
convince them that you have what they need and want to buy. And in those 15 seconds, you
have to show them enough to make them interested in reading more. That's if they get to
your pages at all.
First you have to make it to the top of the slush pile or to the top of the search
engine index.
Self-publishing on the Web offers tremendous opportunities for you to attract new
customers, and to present yourself to those customers. But it also offers new challenges.
If you're a product manufacturer, you have to overcome the customer's natural tendency to
pick up the telephone, because answering questions once -- in writing -- is far cheaper
and far more within your control than having your staff answer them a thousand times. And
then there is the issue of quality. Whether you are selling technology, resume services,
or wart remover ointment, the materials that describe what you are selling have to be at
least as good as what you have to offer.
WRITING FOR THE
NEW MILLENNIUM
Beyond good words and pretty style, good writing
delivers great content -- the kind that meets or exceeds your customers' expectations.
Good writing presents that content in a way that flows naturally from one idea to the next
while creating foundations of knowledge that are solid enough to bear the weight of the
ideas that follow after.
Delivering content for the Internet is both easier and more difficult than
delivering it for traditional publication. Traffic patterns, search engine indexes, and
the wide range of information already available can make it easier to select the kind of
content that your site or document will need to contain. But easy access to competition
means that customers always have another site to go to if they aren't satisfied with what
you offer them.
At The Write Edge, our writing services are designed to help you keep that
from happening. Whether you need our services to write technical, marketing or standard
business copy, or HTML code to translate your ideas into Web pages, we can help you reach
your customers cost-effectively and successfully.
TECHNICAL WRITING THAT
EMPOWERS YOUR READERS
Technical material is increasingly directed at
people with little technical expertise. Unfortunately, it often takes an engineering
degree to be able to understand it. Conveying technical material clearly and intuitively
requires more than simple writing skills. It demands the writer's ability to research,
analyze, compartmentalize material, and find analogies in the user’s everyday
experience vocabulary to help convey something simply that might otherwise take chapters
to explain.
Presenting a technical manual that makes your customer feel stupid won’t help you
to encourage the customer to come back for an upgrade to your latest software release. It
will also force that customer to pick up the telephone and call your technical support
people, which in turn will cost you money. Writing a training manual or online help system
is a lot like building a house of cards. The foundations have to be secure, and each
successive layer has to be safely in place before you can start to build the next. Every
reader brings a different life-experience and comfort level with them when they use a
piece of software or equipment. You have to reach the least sophisticated without boring
the power user.
At The Write Edge, our first step in any writing project is to consider the range of an
audience and how they will access the material. Generally, we can design an information
system that lets advanced users jump to specific information quickly, while providing
novice users with the full support they need.
COPYWRITING -- SOUND
BITES THAT SELL
The world has been reduced to sound bites and
spin control. Corporate advertising and public relations budgets reflect the importance
placed on getting your image right. Nowhere on earth is image more important than on the
World Wide Web.
On the Web, image is everything -- because that's all a reader has.
Getting on the Web is cheap. You don’t have to shell out megabucks to get into the
right address. It’s not about location. It’s not even about your product.
It’s content; it’s presentation; it’s packaging. It’s the right words
-- that say the right thing -- at the right time -- in just the right way.
A great sound bite creates differentiation between your company and the other guy,
between your product and someone else’s product. A great sound bite sticks in a
reader’s mind and eventually makes a sale -- so long as the customer can remember who
is selling the product and where to go to get it.
HTML CODING
Whether you already have copy
written or whether you want us to create that copy from scratch, translating it into HTML
code for the World Wide Web or for your Intranet is just another step in the writing
process. We publish your novel to the Internet, create an online catalog of your products,
or create an archive to answer all the questions that your customers routinely ask. We can
add graphics optimized for the Web, add interactivity including shopping carts, random
events, database lookups, JavaScripts that react to your users -- whatever you need; and
we can publish it all for you at a fraction of the cost of paper publishing.
AN EDGE WITH IMPACT
At The Write Edge, we make it easy. Do you have
a product, an idea, or a Web site? Do you want to boost your sales and increase your
business? Do you want your novel to reach an audience that it cannot find through
traditional publishing methods?
Our writers have helped clients to simplify everything from computer software
documentation to insurance manuals and advertising copy. We have written fiction as well
as scientific content for children, and we understand how to adapt information to suit its
audience.
We believe that writing is an art, but that it is also a business. To do it
effectively, you must combine art, information architecture, marketing, promotion, and
advertising skill. And beyond getting the point across, your written document must add a
little something indefinable that makes the reader remember what they've read.
Give us a try. Our success is measured in letters of praise that our customers receive
from their customers, in increased sales, in stronger customer loyalty, and in
fewer telephone calls that their staff has to answer. We would welcome the opportunity to
do the same for you.
 
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