Keep it short and eliminate the hype
Bill Myers
The secret to getting visitors to read your web pages and email Want to make sure your web page gets read? Keep the page short,
and remove hyped-up, 'marketese'. A recent study by Jakob Neilsen revealed that people rarely read
Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out
individual words and sentences. 79 per cent of test participants
scanned any new page they came across; reading only the headlines
and subheads. If the page was long, and didn't include subheads,
all but 16% of the testers would skip the page completely. Another significant finding . . . the vast majority of testers
would leave a page as soon as they encountered hyped-up, '
marketese'. The study found hyped up promotional language "
imposes a cognitive burden on users who have to spend resources
on filtering out the hyperbole to get at the facts". The study's conclusions:
- Keep the text on your web pages concise, scannable, and
objective
- use subheads to show significant text elements
- include bullet lists
- avoid marketing hype and puffery
Above all, keep in mind that web users are much less motivated to
read long web pages since they can't know whether the site is
relevant to their goals. If the page is long, difficult to read,
or contains hype, they will go elsewhere. Moral: Too many words on your web pages will drive visitors away.
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