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Module 3.2 Electronic/digital products
7 Disseminating environmental information through electronic channels, such as websites, can bring

a great degree of flexibility. It allows messages in mixed formats, such as text, data, graphics and

audiovisual. Today, there is a great and fast growing variety of electronic formats that can be used
for different purposes. This includes formats such as PDF, html pages, RSS ( of a web feed format
9-12 December, 2013 There are many things to consider when choosing an electronic format for communicating your
used to publish frequently updated digital content), blogs and other personalized web-based tools.

message, and it is important to keep in mind that in many countries web access is still limited. That
limitation will vary from country to country and from region to region.

On the web, contents can easily be added, removed or updated. That flexibility offers an opportunity
for publishing information as it becomes available. At the same time, readers will expect that an
Internet site is regularly updated so, if resources for updates are lacking, you may lose readers.

It is important to keep in mind that we read differently on the web than we do with printed
publications. Printed materials have a linear structure, and the reader follows a predefined path;
reading a web report allows the reader to freely navigate from section to section. This has

implications for how a web report should be organized and written. The most important advice
when producing for the web is to limit text lengths and sharpen the messages. Be clear on what
you want to communicate, and focus on the essential parts of your message.

Since people tend to read more slowly on the web, they will probably not follow your messages in
a linear manner all the way to a conclusion, but will jump between pages as their interest shifts. The
main messages you try to communicate should therefore not be saved to the end, but brought to
the beginning of the text. Hence, you start with conclusions and move on from there.

Images and graphics may take a lot of time to download on the Internet for readers with a slow
connection. This makes it important to understand the ability of your audiences to see images,

depending on their computers and Internet connections, and to adjust your images accordingly.

This may mean minimizing their use or at least keep the images sizes small. You can choose images
and graphics without too many details, and to save the images as “jpg” files (for lower resolution

graphics) and the graphics as “gif” files (common file compression format for photographs). If
available, you may provide access to both low and high resolution versions of the same image and
let the readers decide if they want to spend the time accessing the higher resolution one. An image
or graphic should always have explanatory text and the source.

28 Creating Communication Outputs from the Assessment