Converting Print Advertising For Use On The Web - A How-To

Contrary to the beliefs of some, advertising for web and print arevery different. Converting print ads for use on the web is very tricky.What has been very successful on paper may have no impact at all on thescreen. When I am asked "How do I convert my print ads to web?" myanswer is simple: don't! Web and print are so vastly different that Ibelieve you should never build your web pages based on a print ad.

Thereare certain rules that web design must follow that simply don't applyto print. One of my colleagues, Tim Pattison, broke these rules downvery concisely recently:

Usability

Browser compatibility

Designing within the constraints of (X)HTML

Accessibility

Theseare the four rules that web design must follow. I will explain theserules in detail later. For now though we need to talk aboutcopywriting. As I said in my last newsletter Web Site Templates and Their Benefits,the most important part of your website is content. Search engines anddisabled users don't care how your site looks. They only care about theinformation your site presents. The reason I'm coming back to this isto explain that writing web copy is an entirely different ball gamefrom writing print copy. Quite possibly the best resource for writingweb copy is the book "Web Copy That Sells" by Maria Veloso. It outlinesthe differences between the two and gives great techniques to writingfor the web. I will be revisiting this topic in my newsletters to come,so make sure you visit often.

The four rules exclusive to webdesign: usability, browser compatibility, design within the constraintsof (x)html, and accessibility, are the four horsemen of doom for theuneducated, inexperienced designer. They are some of the mostoverlooked aspects of web design, and yet some of the most important.

Usability:Unlike print ads, web sites are interactive. Users must be able toeasily find their way around, and they need a clear path to theinformation they are trying to find. If you are selling a product,there needs to be a clear, concise, distraction free path from the homepage all the way to the check out page.

Browser compatibility:In a perfect world you could design your web site once and it wouldlook perfect and stay perfect in all browsers. Unfortunately, we livein the real world where some browsers support a set of standards andothers simply don't. Actually, the most popular browser in the worldhas for years lived by their own rules. While MS Internet Explorerstill holds the majority of the market share, Mozzilla, Netscape, andOpera have acquired a considerable percentage of the browser market. Infact, it's high enough of a percentage to make Microsoft revise theirplans to release IE 7.0. While competition is healthy, it makes forheadaches for web designers. It is not uncommon to have your sitelooking perfect in one browser only to find that your entire designexplodes when viewed with another.

Designing within the constraints of (x)html:When you lay out a print ad, you place the images where they belong onthe page, draw out any shapes, lay out the colors, and place the text.Then you print it out and make copies. Every copy you hand out looksexactly the same, and there's nothing magic about the way things stayon the page. In web design, everything is held in place by code. Youcould easily have a four to one ratio of code to content. If you arenot familiar with the coding involved in keeping your site looking likeit's supposed to, it can be very frustrating laying out your design.

Accessibility:Back to our perfect world - not only would browsers be perfect, but allour viewers would look through the same eyes. Unfortunately, somepeople aren't blessed with good eyesight or motor skills like you andI. We need to consider that for those who have disabilities, a poorlylaid out website can be completely useless. You could ignore thataudience, but you would be doing yourself a disservice. And let's notforget, our biggest and most important group of users is completelyblind: search engine spiders. They read your website the same way ablind person does. If the layout of your site isn't logical, a spidermay leave and not bother coming back for a long time.

Consideringthese things, I think it is always best to design your web siteseparate from your print advertising. Always write fresh copy for theweb, and remember that it's not enough to write great copy once. Youneed to update your site regularly to keep the search enginesinterested.

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