This blog-Post is dedicated to the very funny David Sedaris, whom I had the pleasure of watching a couple of days ago. 

So here is the bottom line - Communication via the web is not about writing, its about conducting a conversation with your audience (not some anonymous "User", but someone who has taken the trouble to find your site and wants to know more about your organization).  Here is the framework we use - while it is critical that Users are able to find you on the net (hence the value of SEO); it is equally critical to answer the question "What is there for them to do once they are on my site?"  In other words Content is King.

There are of course numerous types of content, the most obvious being text.  Many sites suffer from verbal diarrhea, despite all sorts of evidence showing the people rarely read on the net (or read in short bursts and then look for some action to take).  Even textual data can be represented in a web-consummable format or communicated in non-textual formats like images, videos or podcasts. 

Which brings us to the next form of content (non-textual).  Videos are a great way to communicate one's message, but they need to be succinct and well editted.  New technologies like Viddler co-mingle text based messages with video by embedding tags and comments within the body of the video.  I am a huge fan of action shots (not stock photography, but actual photos of people within the organization engaged in activity).  Pictures add life and color to sites. 

Navigation is also a form of content.  Site navigation, as described in the brilliant book "Don't make me think", are like signs on a grocery aisle.  They need to be ubiquitous and obvious.  Few things are more tiresome than poor site traversal.  Additionally, bread-crumbs need to be in the places that people expect to find them; this is not an area for design innovation. 

Actions and Labels also need to be clear.  Recently, I was asked to review a site design where the User was asked to input their zip code and then location specific information was supposed to pop up.  One big problem, the designers had neglected to add a  button/ arrow/ GO - any indicator of action!  Now code can be written to perform the action when the user tabs out of the field, but that is simply not intuitive.  Users need to be provided obvious action steps so they do not have to pause and wonder.

Finally, sites need to provide simple ways that relevant persons inside the organization can be contacted (this is also a form of content).  User e-mails/ forms should not go into some black hole, but need to be directed to the relevant person who is responsible for that particular area.  The Drupal CMS has a wonderful feature that allows different classes of enquiries to go be directed to different individuals.

Using RSS, commenting, Discussion Forums, Wikis and Blogs, one can truly have a two-way conversation with one's audience.  However, even without those Web 2.0 tools, a little fore-thought can elevate web content to the level of true conversation.