Mayo Clinic wins award for copywriting

Yes, one of the nation’s top health-care providers has people that can write, too. Who knew?!

Mayoclinic.com has earned a Best in Show in the W3 Awards, a competition honoring creative excellence on the Web. It’s sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts.

What sets Mayo’s site apart from other hospital Web sites is its readability and navigability. Articles are aimed at helping users understand medical issues, not at impressing them with their physicians’ knowledge.

The language is clear and direct. Here’s one example:

“Although there are some genetic and hormonal causes of childhood obesity, most excess weight is caused by kids eating too much and exercising too little.”

Another hospital site explains the causes of obesity this way:

“Genetic factors play a role in a child’s risk of being overweight, but obesity rates have tripled in the past 30 years, while genes have not changed. That means that the recent widespread obesity problem is primarily caused by environmental factors. … What we’re eating, how active we are, our family structure.”

Each article on Mayo’s site is broken down into categories, with each page providing the full array of links to every other category within the article.

I don’t go to WebMD for health information anymore. I go to Mayoclinic.org.