Essay 1: Online Reading
Author:
Monika Wnuk
Note: The following essay is a
revision of the "Writing for the Web"-chapter in the
Infineon Technologies
"Internet User Guide" which I have produced last year.
1. Introduction
2.
Scannable
Text
3. Concise
Text
4. Objective
Text
5. Summary
Bibliography
Writing for the web is very different from
writing for print. The "guru of Web page usability" (4, Richtel, New York
Times), Jakob Nielsen, examined the reading mechanisms of Internet users. His
research has shown that reading from a computer screen is about 25% slower than
reading from a printed page (2, Nielsen). As a result, a user's first reaction
when they arrive on a page is to scan the content for headlines, call-outs, and
other elements that indicate what the page is about. This, plus the additional
usability truism that customers typically do not like to scroll necessitate the
following guidelines when publishing text on the Internet
As mentioned above, people rarely read Web pages word by word. Instead, they scan the page, picking out keywords and sentences of interest while skipping over less important parts. Therefore, make your content easy to scan.
To make important words catch the user's eye, emphasize important information using bold and/or italic text, but make sure not to overdo it or it will lose its impact. Use short blocks of text, and bulleted lists where appropriate and limit your text to one main idea per paragraph. Otherwise the user might loose interest and skip over important information. In his first Web usability study, Nielsen found out that several study participants, while scanning text, would read only the first sentence of each paragraph. One person who was trying to scan a long paragraph said, "It's not very easy to find that information. They should break that paragraph into two pieces - one for each topic." (1, Morkes, Nielsen)
Use the "inverted pyramid" method of writing. Begin your page with a short conclusion and expand your message from there. In this way users can get the essence of the page even if they don't read all of it.
Use short headlines and subheads to direct customers' attention to the information within that paragraph and enable them to find immediately what they are searching for. One participant in Nielsen's and Morkes' first study who scanned an article but failed to find what he was looking for said, "If this happened to me at work, where I get 70 emails and 50 voicemails a day, then that would be the end of it. If it doesn't come right out at me, I'm going to give up on it." (1, Morkes, Nielsen)
Words and pictures can be a powerful combination, but they must work together. See that the graphics you use are text-complementing. On the one hand, users should be able to identify the page content by associating it with the image theme. On the other hand, they won't read the text if it differs from the related graphic.
topReading from computer screens is 25% slower than reading from paper as mentioned above. People feel unpleasant when reading online text and, as a result, don't want to read a lot of text from screens (2, Nielsen). "Websites are too wordy. It's hard to read a lot of text on the screen", one of Nielsen's study participiants said (1, Morkes, Nielsen). Therefore, be succinct: write no more than 50% of the text you would have used in a hardcopy publication.
Users also don't like to scroll. Instead, they want a Web page to fit on one screen. To refer to any extra information that is important and useful but unnecessary in the primary content use hyperlinks, text boxes, lists, and other elements of online design. Moreover, users like hypertext as Nielsen and Morkes found out in their second study (1, Morkes, Nielsen).
Do not use the directive "click here" when referring to a link that is underlined. Online customers already know this indicates a link. In fact, the time customers save by knowing where the link will take them is likely greater than the time they lose by having to read a few more words in the hypertext.
topSimple and informal writing are preferred. Users don't like formal , "marketese", or promotional writing with boastful subjective claims ("hottest ever"). Promotional language imposes a cognitive burden on users who have to spend resources on filtering out the hyperbole to get at the facts (3, Nielsen). Web users are busy: they prefer factual information. "I prefer informal writing, because I like to read fast. I don't like reading every word, and with formal writing, you have to read every word, and it slows you down," one person said who participiated in John Morkes' and Jakob Nielsen's second usability study (1, Morkes, Nielsen). Also, credibility suffers when users clearly see that the site exaggerates.
Therefore, avoid promotional writing and use words and categories that make sense to the audience. Try to bring in a conversational touch by using active voice, personal pronouns, or action verbs and give instructions with imperatives. To ease the user's reading flow use parallelisms resp. patterns.
Make sure content is benefit-oriented. Rather than focusing on the attributes of a product or service, explain how the product or service will be useful to the recipient.
Humor should be used with caution.
On the one hand, people like a wide variety of humor types, such as cynical,
irreverent, nonsense, physical, and word-play humor. "I like websites when
they're not all that dry," one study participiant said (1, Morkes, Nielsen). On
the other hand, humorous writing may be difficult, because a site's users may be
diverse in many ways (e.g., culture, education, and age). Therefore, it is
important for a Web writer to know the audience, before including humor in a
site.
Scannable, concise, and objective writing styles each make a positive difference in Web user's performance and subjective satisfaction. At the same time it's obvious that applying all of the mentioned guidelines is nearly impossible. But you should try to combine some of each to provide the best usability.
"People are guaranteed to get results if they develop a Web site with the methods I propose", Nielsen said. And many companies, such as Sun Microsystems, follow his readability resp. usability principles. Try too…
1) Morkes, John and Nielsen, Jakob: "Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective: How to Write for the Web". www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html [Dec '03]. 1997
2) Nielsen, Jakob: "Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web)". www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html [Dec '03]. March 15, 1997
3) Nielsen, Jakob: "How Users Read on the Web". www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html [Dec '03]. October 1, 1997.
4) Richtel, Matt: "Making Web Sites
More 'Usable' Is Former Sun Engineer's Goal". In: New York Times.
www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/07/cyber/articles/13usability.html [Dec '03].
July 13, 1998