If you cannot see this email, please click here.
 
 

 
 
 
  Dear Readers,
In a recent study about web user behaviour, Harald Heinreich from the University of Hamburg and his colleagues made an interesting observation: users navigated away from pages rapidly, even if those were pages with substantial content. This happened so quickly, that they could not possibly have read the content that was provided for them by the web site owners.

Usability expert Jacob Nielsen took a close look at the study and made some own calculations with usage time and word count data. He concludes that the average visitor reads only about 20% of the text on a web page. This affirms some of Nielsen’s own studies, in which he found out that internet users scan – not read.

Agencies and web site owners need to deal with this fact. We cannot tell our visitors anything they are not interested in at the time of their visit. Instead, we need to support them in finding the information they are looking for as quickly as possible.

Good luck with your web projects,


Sylke Laine
Concept Development
mediaman
 
 
So web site visitors don’t read. This is shown again and again in scientific studies and our own usability testing. Users scan. What does that mean, exactly?

Eye tracking studies show that visitors move across a web page brachiating from one anchor point to the next: They skim over headlines, sub headlines, highlighted words (bold or in an accent color), links (if they are noticeably marked), and lists (if they are not too long, and there are not too many lists).

It is striking, how many times a so called “F-pattern” can be recognized in users’ eye movements:
 
 
The red spots mark those screen positions on which users’ eyes lingered longest. The image demonstrates that only the first lines of a paragraph and of those, only the first words are actually discerned. We can come to some conclusions about web site visitors’ intentions and derive some guidance for web copy writers and site editors.

What is the intention of your web site visitor?
This question has to be the focus of all copy writing, as much as it should be the focus for design and information architectural work. The visitor is looking for specific information, or wants to finish a certain task. And he will not be distracted, as much as we would like to do that sometimes. And if we try, anyway, to praise our products or services in many words and colourful language, there is a danger of frustrating our visitor, because we distract him from his actual task and are wasting his time.

 
[ ]
 
USER CENTRED WRITING
Try to look at the topics on your web site from the eye of the visitor – not from your own view or that of your company. Write only content in which your visitors are interested in, and in doing so, use a language that they understand.
 

  Some basic instructions for web writing:
// Cut existing text manuscripts by 50%.
// If, after that, you still find illustrating text which doesn’t focus on pure facts – cut again..
// Cut out words that talk about your organization – unless your visitors need that information.
// Write in inverted pyramid style: Start with the key point and most important facts.
// Use simple and objective language. Short sentences. Short words.
// Highlight key words.
// Insert meaningful links.
// Structure text with short, precise and appellative headlines and sub headlines.
// Keep paragraphs short.
// Make use of lists, both bullet points, and numbered lists work well.
// Read your text again. Can you cut some more without losing your essential message?

 
 
Mention the most important information at the beginning.
Elaborate details below. The individual issues are treated in order of their importance: The most important at the beginning.
Write the remaining in a way which makes it possible to delete it.

 
[ ]
 
Further Reading:
 

 
Free subscriber service
Send us a link to a section on your web site. We will check the copy text and offer suggestions for improvement.


 
hello@mediaman.com.cn // T +86 21 6299 4416
You can unsubscribe from this useletter here. > click here

 
mediaman Shanghai
Suite 601, 68 Chang Ping Road // Shanghai 200041, CN
T +86 21 6299 4416 // F +86 21 6299 4417 // www.mediaman.com.cn

Copyright 2008 mediaman // the communication architects