W ith Intranet technology, information can cost-effectively be made widely accessible, and the universal interface offered by web browsers ensures that anyone, not just technical staff, can publish and receive electronic content. Engineers, Accountants, Auditors, HR managers, Customer Service Reps, and Programmers can document how they do their jobs and then share this information with anyone who needs it. Who best to document work than the person who does the job!

But while implementing an Intranet and creating web-ready documents solves the delivery part of the knowledge-transfer problem, it cannot guarantee that your documents will get read. Nor can it safeguard your organization from publishing inaccurate information. Moreover, if users become frustrated the first time they visit the corporate Web, they may never return!

It's important to do some upfront planning and be knowledgeable about techniques for creating effective online content.

Unfortunately, with the rush to "go electronic," many people are putting a lot of documents online that were originally designed for paper. The result is often short-term savings in printing and paper costs, followed by the realization that the content was unusable, hard to read, and tough to maintain in the first place!

As information service professionals we have the opportunity to create truly dynamic, interactive content with navigational links to all sorts of related information. But this exciting opportunity also offers new challenges. Web documents present a new paradigm and require different design techniques.

8 Practical Tips for Creating
High-Impact Web Content

The single most important thing you can do towards implementing an effective knowledgebase web site is to make sure your content is well-written to begin with. For online policies and procedures to be effective, they must be concise, steps must be clear, and instructions should not be overly complicated.

In fact, studies show that people remember and learn more effectively from paper than screen. Therefore, it is particularly important that we are smart about how we design web documents. Simply converting static word-processing documents to HTML only gives you static electronic documents that require a lot of scrolling and are hard to read and use. This is a big mistake.

Make the reasonable assumption that many readers of your web documents are just getting acclimated to reading information online. A simple, navigable presentation is more inviting for them and more likely to get your points across.

At COMPROSE we've compiled a list of 8 practical tips that will point you in the right direction and help you think about some strategic issues before you get too far down the road. Consider the following essential ingredients that should be part of your intranet design and implementation strategy.

Putting these straightforward guidleines into practice will help you ensure that your Intranet not only delivers organizational knowledge, but enables people to put it to good use.