Usability studies of corporate content distributed through Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn: users like the simplicity of messages that pass into oblivion over time, but were frequently frustrated by unscannable writing, overly frequent postings, and their inability to locate companies on social networks.
Testing how well people understand a link's first 11 characters shows whether sites write for users, who typically scan rather than read lists of items.
User research finds significant deficiencies in non-profit organizations' website content, which often fails to provide the info people need to make donation decisions.
Writing for Kindle is like writing for print, the Web, and mobile devices combined; optimal usability means optimizing content for each platform's special characteristics.
Users often see online content out of context and read it with different goals than you envisioned. While you can't predict all such goals, you can plan for multiple uses of your text.
As 3 studies of journalists show, they use the Web as a major research tool, exhibit high search dominance, and are impatient with bloated sites that don't serve their needs or list a PR contact.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Eyetracking research shows that people scan webpages and phone screens in various patterns, one of them being the shape of the letter F. Eleven years after discovering this pattern, we revisit what it means today.
Professionals want clear, concise information devoid of unnecessary jargon or complex terms. Plain language is a necessity and benefits both consumers and organizations.
A generic Get Started call-to-action attracts clicks, but also misleads users and acts as a roadblock for those looking to get information about the company.
These tips for writing web content for specialized audiences will help you sound authoritative and bolster your credibility. Professionals want content that is easy to scan, factual, and verifiable.
Readers can understand short, simple text content on mobile devices just as well as on computers, but they slow down when reading difficult text on mobile.
