I decided to use something which I recently found to be very helpful: the documentation for my friend’s router. We had a small problem adding a laptop to this router and went to the manufacturer’s site for help. Below you can see the opening page, which I found simply by entering the model number into a search box. All the items in the lists have tabs to click for more information. As you can see, the page contains everything a user or a prospective customer might want to know:
- A brief description of the router’s capabilities and features
- A price box with a link to buy online
- An easy to find support link (which we used)
- A clean and simple tabbed information box
- Bulleted points about the company and the router
These features make this an excellent website sales and service document.
Audience
The intended audience for this page is their customers. This company sells wholesale B to B (Business to Business) and retail, so their customers range from senior citizens who want more than one computer in the house to very experienced network administrators at large corporations. Their knowledge may range from professional engineering level to none at all. Therefore, there are illustrations throughout the text, and jargon words that are part of the computer networking genre are explained in plain English.
Persona
The document is written in an informal style, implying that the company is friendly, and it is successful in creating the impression that it is the company speaking, personified.
Message
The message of this document is two-fold. It is a sales document designed to get the reader excited about the many things this router can do for them. It is also an informational document for professionals, giving them a short description of the router’s capabilities. The real message here is that this company is customer orientated and technically advanced.
Purpose
The purpose of this document is to provide a brief overview of this router and get the reader interested. It also serves as a point of contact to offer technical assistance to the current users. It provides an easy-to-navigate interface to more information.
Style
The style of this document is technical writing for a broad audience, generally used for specialized or targeted web content. It is very successful in that it provides essential information immediately on one page and connects the user easily to more information of whatever type they seek. There is a lot of White space, and the color balance is attractive and not too busy. The two illustrations inform and are also attractive. The page header has links to other information and other parts of the website. It also tells the reader which geographical site location they are connected.
The Discourse of the Genre
This is an excellent example of communication within and without this discourse group. They use some jargon words but explain them to the layman. They also include a lot of information in shortlists. This discourse community is sales savvy and yet quite technologically advanced. This gives their customers the distinct feeling that they are here to help, and yet they do not intimidate. These are standard good practices for excellent web content writers. The documents are generally designed to entertain, inform and sell.
The writers in this discourse community may write for B to B (Business to Business) or for the end-user. They have deep knowledge of the networking products and how they are used. They also know a lot about their end-users from notes taken by support personnel and from surveys (Andrusyshyn 2009). Their writing style is informative, informal and they use industry jargon but define it when the document is for the end-user.
Works Cited
Andrusyshyn, K. 2009. SBIT Call Center. Unpublished “WNDR3700” Web.