Keep Content Focused
Be Concise. Write tersely. Cut your content by half and then by half again. Avoid stating the obvious. Forget the long introductions. Avoid breezy and verbose greetings.Because the resolution of a monitor is much lower than most printed materials, and because the length of a line of text is often greater, people tend to read more slowly online.
Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen reports on a study that the measured usability of a typical website written in traditional "promotional style" scored:
- 58% higher in measured usability when it was written concisely
- 47% higher when the text was scannable, and
- 27% higher when it was written in an objective style.
Nielsen states that "Combining these three changes into a single site that was concise, scannable, and objective at the same time resulted in 124% higher measured usability."
Last updated on Tuesday, January 23, 2007.
