There are a lot of factors that go into creating and publishing great content for the web. Here are some of the most important things to consider when sending us content you'd like to be placed on the website. 


Accuracy


Before sending us written content for the USFSM.edu website, please ensure all of your information is accurate. This includes everything from dates/times of events, to address and phone numbers, and names/places. Be sure to proofread for these types of errors prior to submitting a ticket. 


Quality


Is the content written in an engaging way? Is this information useful for the general public or for current/prospective students? If you need help generating creative, thoughtful, engaging and high-quality written content for the website, please don't hesitate to reach out to our Communications & Marketing Team. We can set up a meeting with you to gather information that may need to be placed on the website, but assist in presenting the information in a way that will have the greatest impact and be most useful for our website visitors. 


Conciseness


Sometimes less really is more! When it comes to the web, people prefer to scan for the content they need and typically don't spend a lot of time reading a page that has a dozen or so paragraphs. Especially with the new trend of increased users visiting our website from mobile devices, it's important that we keep a majority of our webpages brief and concise. 


Use of White Space


When there is a need for more lengthy content, utilizing more white space (the blank space on our webpages between paragraphs and line breaks) is highly important. This can allow users to digest the information more easily without being overwhelmed. 


Readability


Avoid jargon and technical terms whenever possible. Also be sure to write in clear, easy-to-read sentences and break up longer sentences with punctuation. If you are used to writing at a higher technical level, consider asking us to assist in rephrasing what you'd like to say or ask yourself this question while writing: "How could I write this in a way that even a 5th grader could understand?"


References & Hyperlinks


If you are referring to other partner institutions, local/national organizations, companies or government websites, it's extremely helpful to include hyperlinks within the text to those resources for our website visitors to refer to. This is especially important for any web content that refers to statistics, studies or any other websites where we may be getting our information from. Plagiarism isn't only for traditional texts -- we should watch out for it in the digital world, too!


Subheaders


If you have a page with a few key parts that add up to more than a couple paragraphs on a webpage, subheaders can be a huge help to guide the reader through the text and give them a sneak preview at what the next section of text will be about. 


Call-to-Action


As we strive to provide as much information as possible to our website visitors, it's extremely helpful to provide them with a call-to-action on nearly every webpage they visit. This can be as simple as guiding them to call/contact someone within your department for help, or suggesting that they continue to explore other resources we offer on the website. The idea here is to guide website visitors to do something upon reading each page.