Writing for the web: usability top tips
Last week I attended Usability Week 2008 in London. For those who don’t know Usability Week marked the London-leg of a ‘world tour’ by the Nielsen Norman Group – the usability experts. The tour also takes in San Francisco, New York, and Melbourne, so I felt quite privileged.
I went to an all-day session on writing for the web, here’s a round up of some of the points covered*:
- Web users are goal-driven; they aren’t reading for pleasure. So don’t waste their time.
- Users read 25% slower from computer screens than from paper.
- 79% scan rather than read word-for-word.
- Users rarely read whole passages. Their eyes track across pages in an F-pattern.
- It’s important to create an effective visual hierarchy with descriptive headlines, using headings and links to create road signs.
- For emails; users scan text, mostly skipping the intro, and spend an average time per newsletter of 51 seconds.
- Write for the most frequent visitor type – but ensure that new users are accommodated.
- Writing for a lower comprehension level helps everyone – but there’s no need to ‘talk down’, just simplify.
- The optimum reading level or age to aim for is 13-14 years old (12 years for a homepage and overviews).
- Write for fast comprehension, using simple language and chunk content into concepts.
- Non-descriptive links are useless, such as ‘click here’. Links that are blue and underlined are the most recognised.
- Links and URLs should be descriptive and identify the content they link to.
- Write to be printed; ensure printouts contain all relevant info, company name, contact details, URL etc.
- If you’re repurposing offline content – cut it by 50%.
*Source: Nielsen Norman Group.
About the Author
Debbi oversees the marketing of Coast Digital, including looking after the company website, press, publicity, and all internal communications. She managed the Coast Digital re-brand campaign and webs... more »
The opinions expressed herein are the personal opinion of the author and are not intended as statements of fact and do not represent the view of Coastdigital Limited in any way
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