Best Practices: Home

Think about the context of your guide:

• It's web (online) content, which users read and use differently than print 
• If it is for a specific course, try to work with the instructor or look at their syllabus and tailor your content to students' needs
• What is its life cycle? How frequently should it be updated and maintained? 

Plan your guide content to make it: 

• Clear
• Concise
• Scan-able
• Direct 

Use Keywords to create titles and subheadings that will "chunk" your content into meaningful, "scan-able", and absorbable segments. 

Online readers scan, get what they need, and move on. Think about what you want your users to be able to do and what you want them to learn, and create your guides with those key goals in mind.  

Smashing Magazine has suggested that the following are important to consider when developing content: purpose, context, precision of message, clarity, persuasiveness (OR why, where, who, what, and how).