Project Pages

What is a project page?

Project pages cover ongoing areas of Amnesty’s human rights work that require an evergreen presence on our site. They are appropriate for content that is likely to receive future updates and sustained traffic and are designed and written with future updates in mind so that they can be kept fresh.  

Unlike issue pages, which cover topics from a general viewpoint, project pages have a more specific focus on a particular campaign or area of work, and often have a regional focus. For example, “The Human Cost of Overfishing in Gambia”, is specific enough to be a a project page, whereas the Issue page for this topic is Corporate Accountability. Enforced Disappearances in South Asia will be a project page, whereas the general issue is covered on the Enforced Disappearances page. Evergreen project pages are primarily informational rather than navigational but should funnel users to a clear call to action. 

Project pages are published on amnesty.org in https://www.amnesty.org/en/projects, and featured on the What We Do page at https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/. (Note that the English language code is used here to give a complete address, but project pages can be published in Spanish, French and Arabic too) 

Page structure and design

• Do start your page with a simple overview and introduction to the topic. This should be no more than three paragraphs. 
• Do provide one call to action and provide your readers with a way they can help.  
• Do repeat the primary action to so users don’t miss it.  
• Do not include more than one call to action. Having multiple calls to action can lead to users being overwhelmed and taking no action at all.  
• Do make sure to include the following sections in your page:  

1. Overview/introduction – Provide a summary of the issue and any essential background information that is no more than four paragraphs long.  Choose an interesting heading, written in a conversational tone, to ensure that you grab people’s attention.  
2. Call To Action (CTA) – The main CTA should be displayed at the start of the page so that more people will see it and act. Use the CTA block. The action might be specific to the page (e.g., sign a petition) or it might be more general, such as becoming a member.   
3. Main body of the report – The main body of the report should be organised using clear headings, which should be written in a conversational tone. The headings should follow a structured hierarchy. Use the section block to help structure the page content.  
4. CTA – Repeat the primary CTA at the end of the page. This ensures that more users will see the CTA.  
5. Related content – Add a post list for related content at the bottom of the page. (Web Ops can help set this up) Related content can be manually selected for this block. We should avoid having too many other navigational elements on the page as they are likely to reduce engagement with the information on the page, and the primary CTA.  

Writing guidelines

• Do include the most important and attention-grabbing information at the top of the page, and place less important content towards the bottom of the page. (Inverted pyramid) 
• Do use meaningful subheadings to create an outline for the page and ensure that it is well structured.  
• Keep the word count for the page between 1500-2500 words.  
• Try to keep sentences short so that they are easy to read.  
• Paragraphs should stay short to avoid a ‘wall of text’. Try to stick to 2-3 sentences per paragraph, 2-3 paragraphs per subheading. 
• Use a short word instead of a long word if possible.  
• Our reading comprehension is lower when we read online. Long words are distracting and make it difficult to skim content when we read quickly. 
• Do include the date for any related events or reports rather than using past time expressions such as “yesterday”, “last week” or “last month”. This will make the page text sound more evergreen and less dated in future.   

Write with a conversational tone that can be easily understood by people reading about this topic for the first time 

• Do start your post with a summary of the topic that is a maximum of four paragraphs long. 
• Do refer to the reader as ‘you’. If the speaker is an Amnesty member or staff member, they should refer to Amnesty as ‘we’. 
• Do not use passive voice. For example, ‘Authorities detained thousands of protesters’ not ‘Thousands of protesters were detained by authorities’. 
• Do use present tense instead of imperfect tense when possible. For example, ‘Amnesty campaigns for human rights’ not ‘Amnesty has campaigned for human rights’ 
• Do not use jargon, acronyms or other complicated language. If we need to reference a specific government body, be prepared to explain what that body does and why it is relevant to the topic. 
• Do add in-line links to reference existing materials so that people can explore those resources in a new tab. This can make it easier for you to focus on the main points in the blog post without overwhelming people with too much information. 
• Do not use footnotes to cite your sources. 

All content should meet our minimum web content accessibility standards 

• Do not use photos with text edited onto them. This includes infographics being added as image. If you want to add an infographic, use a data visualization tool like Infogram or Flourish. 
• Add subtitles to your video if it has voiceover or otherwise relies on sound to communicate. This includes adding subtitles in other languages if the page is being translated into other languages. 
• Add alt text for all images. Alt text should be short and descriptive. It should not include text like ‘photo of’ or ‘image of’ since this can get repetitive for screen-readers 
• Use structured text to break up your writing into manageable chunks. 

Adhere to our audiovisual publishing guidelines 

• Do not add distressing images or video, for example of death or physical effects of human rights abuses, unless it is for a good reason. If your page contains distressing imagery, the content should be hidden until the user clicks to reveal after reading a content warning. 
• For work related to the death penalty, do not use images of methods used to execute people such as nooses, electric chairs, needles. 
• Do look after your own well-being when working with disturbing content. 
• Use appropriate language · Follow Amnesty’s inclusive language guidelines. For help, check out A-Z list of terms. 
• Do not use expletive or offensive language. 

Other recommendations

Make your text easier to read or skim 

• Do use bold formatting to highlight the most important parts of your text. 
• Do use bullet points instead of listing out items in a sentence with commas. 
• Do move important points onto their own line to give them gravity. 

Use high-quality images and videos that don’t weigh down your page 

• Do not use screenshots of photographs or videos, unless we do not have access to the originals. 
• Compress your images so they are less than 2MB. You should be able to do this without impacting the image quality if you are using an original image file. 
• Crop images so they complement your page layout.