Introduction: (Still) growing Internet usage necessitates Web texts that work out

2007-05-06 10:04 |

During the last ten to fifteen years the Internet has become an important factor to conduct many of our daily activities at home and on the job. As a medium of information and communication the Internet reached indispensable status for business and science, but for private usage as well.

Increasing Internet Usage Equals Growing Markets

The latest statistics concerning the use of information technology still show an increasing percentage of households with Internet access, and there is no sign of diminishing. This development can be seen in almost all parts of the globe, even in the USA, the country of the Internet origin. Surveys also show that home is indeed the most common place for people to access the Internet. Most common activities of private Internet usage besides e-mail are searching for information, soon followed by e-commerce, which means ordering products or services via the Internet. The importance of the Internet for selling goods of any kind seems to follow the general trend.

It is therefore plain to see that the broad acceptance of Internet technologies opens a promising market for the industries, B2B as well as B2C. Businesses have discovered the advantages of Internet distribution long ago. Increasing bandwidths of data transfer have the potential to reduce costs of production, transport and storing (see Hansen 2004); Internet technologies have contributed to effectively distribute material or virtual goods worldwide.

Still, it is text that makes the Web

In order to successfully establish any online business it will be necessary to make use of the advantages of the Internet with sensibility and expertise. Business on the Web calls for an understanding of the global dimension of the medium, particular human factors, and a profound knowledge of how to communicate effectively from business to consumer. Such communication relates to e.g. describing corporate philosophy, motivating the costumer to identify himself with a product or brand, finally making him buy the goods, telling him how to proceed, and so on. From the economic point of view, the structural shift from conventional trades to e-commerce is a comparatively simple task, due to the advantages of Internet distribution described above. But:

As communication via the Web is mainly based on textual information, for there is no face-to-face interaction in the moment of the deal, publishing textual content that works well on the online medium is quite another matter.

This problem raises the need of a linguistic point of view, since one cannot do without language in the use of Web sites for making complex actions feasible, such as buying goods trough the Internet.

What is to come: Aspect of my linguistic approach

That is why I will discuss linguistic guidelines of authoring (English) Web content with respect to findings from Web usability research in the context of e-commerce within this blog. Over the next few postings, I will therefore examine some of the commercial and cultural concerns of providers and vendors that represent the total environment in which Web texts may unfold – the context – being one aspect of a linguistic approach towards textual communication.

Thus, I will provide a linguistic framework for my discussion on writing for the Web, based on text linguistics, respectively discourse analysis. This will be part of a general characterization of Web texts from a linguistic perspective, including an introduction to Internet usability issues focussing on textual information. After that, the consequences for writing on the Web that result from these aspects shall be described in linguistic terms.

On the whole, the centre of attention will be linguistic aspects of authoring (English) texts for Web sites, not automatically any type of computerized textual communication. Focussing on the English language is chosen on purpose, as I already explained. My blog will be about effective writing for the Web, not about typical Internet language phenomena as one can find e. g. across Internet chat rooms – an issue that has often been a subject of linguistic studies. In contrast to that, I will try to show how characteristics of Web content and the context in which it ought to work should be reflected in the way textual information has to be prepared in order to reach the communicative goals. I will argue that linguistics must be considered in Web development, just as economics and informatics, as well as creative abilities (design) are required to produce successful Web sites.

Published by Christian Kuhn

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