Information foraging explains how users behave on the web and why they click certain links and not others. Information scent can be used to analyze how people assess a link and the page context surrounding the link to judge what's on the other end of the link.
A content inventory and audit are two important activities to complete before developing a strategy to improve your digital content. Conduct them together to set your content up for success.
Policy pages often fail to follow basic usability guidelines: they are not readable, lack high-level summaries and inside-policy navigation, have poor formatting, and are not available in expected places.
Before you write any content for the web, you should clearly define who will read it, what the reader’s goals are, and what impact you want your content to have on the reader.
Looking back at findings from a series of eyetracking studies over 13 years, we see that fundamental scanning behaviors remain constant, even as designs change.
The words in your interface can help establish your product’s personality. The tone of any piece of content can be analyzed along 4 dimensions: humor, formality, respectfulness, and enthusiasm.
4 guidelines for writing the link texts on websites to ensure users click the right options. Links should be Specific, Sincere, Substantial, and Succinct.
Eyetracking research shows that there are 4 main patterns that people use to scan textual information on webpages: F-pattern, spotted pattern, layer-cake pattern, and commitment pattern.
When headings and subheadings visually stand out on the page and are descriptive, users engage in an efficient scanning pattern that allows them to quickly find the information that they need.
Users expect About Us sections to be clear, authentic, and transparent. They compare corporate content with third-party reviews to form a holistic opinion of a company before initiating business or applying for jobs.
Typography concepts can sometimes get lost in translation between researchers, developers, designers, and stakeholders. Use this cheat sheet to help you decode the meaning of common or often mistaken typography terms.
Labels for commands should be brief, informative, rely on verbs and adjectives, and avoid branded terms. Command shortcuts must limit the number of modifiers and follow standard conventions.
The language used in interfaces influences the decisions that our users will make. Manipulative copy nudges users towards making choices that are against their best interests.
Chunking makes content easier to comprehend and remember. Chunking text help users understand the relationship between content elements and information hierarchy.
The language of your product is important when communicating with a global audience. Translation and localization are two different levels of adaptation.
In our usability study with domain experts, we discovered that even highly educated readers crave succinct information that is easy to scan, just like everyone else.
Start content with the most important piece of information so readers can get the main point, regardless of how much they read. This style of writing is perfectly suited to writing for the web.
Information foraging explains how users behave on the web and why they click certain links and not others. Information scent can be used to analyze how people assess a link and the page context surrounding the link to judge what's on the other end of the link.
Before you write any content for the web, you should clearly define who will read it, what the reader’s goals are, and what impact you want your content to have on the reader.
The words in your interface can help establish your product’s personality. The tone of any piece of content can be analyzed along 4 dimensions: humor, formality, respectfulness, and enthusiasm.
4 guidelines for writing the link texts on websites to ensure users click the right options. Links should be Specific, Sincere, Substantial, and Succinct.
Chunking makes content easier to comprehend and remember. Chunking text help users understand the relationship between content elements and information hierarchy.
The language of your product is important when communicating with a global audience. Translation and localization are two different levels of adaptation.
In our usability study with domain experts, we discovered that even highly educated readers crave succinct information that is easy to scan, just like everyone else.
Eyetracking research shows people read Web content in the F-pattern. The results highlight the importance of following guidelines for writing for the Web.
Automated email can improve customer service, strengthen relationships, and help websites bypass search engines. But most messages fared poorly in user testing and didn't fulfill this potential.
Typically, you should deemphasize your company's name in links, but a new guideline recommends frontloading the name for search engine links under certain conditions.
Information foraging shows how to calculate your content strategy's costs and benefits. A mixed diet that combines brief overviews and comprehensive coverage is often best.
Active voice is best for most Web content, but using passive voice can let you front-load important keywords in headings, blurbs, and lead sentences. This enhances scannability and thus SEO effectiveness.
Introductory text on Web pages is usually too long, so users skip it. But short intros can increase usability by explaining the remaining content's purpose.
To demonstrate world-class expertise, avoid quickly written, shallow postings. Instead, invest your time in thorough, value-added content that attracts paying customers.
Familiar words spring to mind when users create their search queries. If your writing favors made-up terms over legacy words, users won't find your site.
Lower-literacy users exhibit very different reading behaviors than higher-literacy users: they plow text rather than scan it, and they miss page elements due to a narrower field of view.
Excessive word count and worthless details are making it harder for people to extract useful information. The more you say, the more people tune out your message.
Search engine ads are one type of Web advertising that can actually work. To create the best ads, do quick experiments and redesign ads based on usability principles for online writing. Doing so helped us increase ad click-through by 55% to 310%.
A website's tagline must explain what the company does and what makes it unique among competitors. Two questions can help you assess your own tagline: Would it work just as well for competitors? Would any company ever claim the opposite?
Corporations spend millions on PR, and yet the press sections of their websites often fail to meet journalists' most basic information needs. In our recent usability study, journalists found answers to only 68% of their questions across a range of corporate sites.
Regulatory agencies should not transfer their rules from the print world unchanged to Web content that is being read in a different manner. Instead, regulations should concern the usability of the actual information and whether users understand it.
