Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective: How to Write when it comes to Web

Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective: How to Write when it comes to Web

Summary: Studies of how users continue reading the internet found they scan the text that they do not actually read: instead. A research of five different writing styles discovered that a sample internet site scored 58% higher in measured usability with regards to was written concisely, 47% higher if the text was scannable, and 27% higher with regards to was printed in an objective style rather than the promotional style utilized in the control condition and lots of current website pages. Combining these three changes into a single site that was concise, scannable, and objective on top of that led to 124% higher measured usability.

Unfortunately, this paper is created in a print style that is writing is somewhat too academic in style. We know this will be bad, however the paper was written as the way that is traditional of on a research study. We have a short summary that is more suited for online reading.

Introduction

“Really good writing – that you don’t see much of that on the net,” said certainly one of our test participants. And our general impression is that most internet users would agree. Our studies declare that current Web writing often does not support users in achieving their definitive goal: to locate information that is useful quickly as you are able to.

We have been Web that is running usability since 1994 Nielsen 1994b, Nielsen and Sano 1994, Nielsen 1995. Our research reports have been similar to almost every other Web usability work (e.g., Shum 1996, Spool et al. 1997) and have mainly looked at site architecture, navigation, search, page design, layout, graphic elements and magnificence, and icons. Even so, we have collected many user comments concerning the content in this long variety of studies. Indeed, we have started to understand that content is king within the user’s mind: When asked for feedback on a Web page, users will comment on the high quality and relevance associated with the content to a much greater extent that we consider to be “user interface” (as opposed to simple information) than they will comment on navigational issues or the page elements. Similarly, when a web page pops up, users focus their attention from the center regarding the window where they see the body text before they bother looking over headerbars or any other elements that are navigational.

We have derived three main content-oriented conclusions from our four years’ of Web usability studies Nielsen 1997a:

  • users try not to keep reading the Web; instead they scan the pages, wanting to pick out a few sentences or even components of sentences to obtain i need someone to write my essay for me the information they desire
  • users don’t like long, scrolling pages: they like the text to be short also to the idea
  • users detest anything that appears like marketing fluff or overly hyped language (“marketese”) and prefer information that is factual.

This point that is latter well illustrated by the following quote from a customer survey we ran from the Sun website:

“One word of advice, folks: Why don’t we do not be so gratuitous and self-inflating. Beginning answers to common sense questions such as “Will Sun support my older Solaris platform?” with answers such as “Sun is exceptionally devoted to. ” and “Solaris is a operating that is leading in today’s business community. ” doesn’t give me, as an engineer, a lot of confidence in your ability. I would like to hear fact, not platitudes and self-serving ideology. Hell, you will want to just paint your home page red beneath the moving banner of, “Computers of the world, Unite beneath the glorious Sun motherland!”

Even though we have gained some comprehension of Web content from studies that mainly concerned higher-level Web design issues, we felt that individuals had a need to learn more about Web writing to be able to advise our content creators. We therefore designed a number of studies that specifically looked at how users read Web pages.

Summary of Studies

We conducted three studies for which a complete of 81 users read website pages. The first two studies were exploratory and qualitative and were geared towards generating insight into how users read and whatever they like and dislike. The study that is third a measurement study geared towards quantifying the possibility advantages from some of the most promising writing styles identified in the 1st two studies. All three studies were conducted during the summer of 1997 when you look at the SunSoft usability laboratories in Menlo Park, CA.

A major goal in the first study would be to compare the reading behavior of technical and non-technical users. Even though we had conducted some earlier studies with non-technical participants, almost all of our studies had used highly technical users. Also, given the nature of your site, the majority of the information collected from site surveys was supplied by technical users.

In Study 1, we tested an overall total of 11 users: 6 end-users and 5 technical users. The main distinction between technical and non-technical users appeared to play out in participants’ familiarity and expertise with search tools and hypertext. The technical users were better informed about how precisely to execute searches compared to the end-users were. Technical users also seemed more aware of and much more enthusiastic about following hypertext links. One or more end-user said he is sometimes reluctant to use hypertext for anxiety about getting lost.

Apart from those differences, there looked like no differences that are major how technical and non-technical users approached reading on the Web. Both groups desired scannable text, short text, summaries, etc.

The tasks were classic directed tasks comparable to those used in nearly all of our previous Web usability studies. Users were typically taken up to the house page of a specific website and then asked to get specific info on the site. This process was taken fully to steer clear of the well-known problems when users have to find things by searching the entire Web Web that is entire and Hockley 1997Pollock. The following is an example task:

you’re planning a trip to Las Vegas and would like to learn about a local restaurant run by chef Charlie Trotter. You heard it had been located in the MGM Grand casino and hotel, but you want more details concerning the restaurant. You begin by studying the website for Restaurants & Institutions magazine at: http://www.rimag.com

Hint: seek out stories on casino foodservice

Try to find out:
-what the content said about the restaurant
-where food that is most is served in the riverboat casino

Unfortunately, the internet is currently so hard to use that users wasted enormous levels of time searching for the specific page that contained the response to the question. Even though on the intended page, users often could not get the answer simply because they didn’t begin to see the line that is relevant. As an end result, much of Study 1 ended up repeating navigation issues we got fewer results than desired relating to actual reading of content that we knew from previous studies and.

Users Would You Like To Search

Upon visiting each site, almost all associated with participants wanted to focus on a keyword search. “a search that is good is key for a good website,” one participant said. If search engines had not been available, a number of the participants said, they might try using the browser’s “Find” command.

Sometimes participants needed to be asked to attempt to discover the information without using a search tool, because searching had not been a main focus with this study.


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