Summary: Studies of how users continue reading the Web found that they don’t actually read: instead, they scan the text. A study of five writing that is different found that a sample internet site scored 58% higher in measured usability with regards to was written concisely, 47% higher when the text was scannable, and 27% higher when it was printed in a goal style instead of the promotional style used in the control condition and several current website pages. Combining these three changes into a single site that was concise, scannable, and objective on top of that led to 124% higher measured usability.
Unfortunately, this paper is created in a print style that is writing is somewhat too academic however you like. We understand that is bad, however the paper was written because the way that is traditional of on a research study. We now have a short summary that is more fitted to online reading.
Introduction
“Really good writing – that you don’t see much of that on the Web,” said certainly one of our test participants. And our impression that is general is most internet users would agree. Our studies declare that current Web writing often does not support users in achieving their main goal: to get useful information as quickly as you possibly can.
We’ve been running Web usability studies since 1994 Nielsen 1994b, Nielsen and Sano 1994, Nielsen 1995. Our research reports have been much like almost every other Web usability work (e.g., Shum 1996, Spool et al. 1997) and now have mainly looked over site architecture, navigation, search, page design, layout, graphic elements and style, and icons. Even so, we now have collected many user comments concerning the content with this long number of studies. Indeed, we have come to understand that content is king within the user’s mind: When asked for feedback on a Web page, users will touch upon the product quality and relevance for the content to a much greater extent that we consider to be “user interface” (as opposed to simple information) than they will comment on navigational issues or the page elements. Similarly, when a web page comes up, users focus their attention regarding the center for the window where they browse the body text before they bother looking over headerbars or any other navigational elements.
We now have derived three main conclusions that are content-oriented our four years’ of Web usability studies Nielsen 1997a:
- users do not continue reading the net; instead they scan the pages, wanting to pick out a sentences that are few even areas of sentences to obtain the information they desire
- users don’t like long, scrolling pages: they prefer the text to be short and to the point
- users detest something that appears like marketing fluff or overly hyped language (“marketese”) and prefer information that is factual.
This latter point is well illustrated because of the following quote from a person survey we ran on the Sun website:
“One piece of advice, folks: Why don’t we try not to be so gratuitous and self-inflating. Beginning answers to wise practice questions such as “Will Sun support my older Solaris platform?” with answers such as “Sun is exceptionally focused on. ” and “Solaris is a leading operating system in today’s world of business. ” does not give me, as an engineer, lots of confidence in your capability. I wish to hear fact, not platitudes and self-serving ideology. Hell, have you thought to just paint your home page red under the moving banner of, “Computers of the world, Unite underneath the glorious Sun motherland!”
Even though we now have gained some comprehension of site content from studies that mainly concerned higher-level website design issues, we felt that we needed seriously to learn more about Web writing in order to advise our content creators. We therefore designed a number of studies that specifically looked over how users read website pages.
Summary of Studies
We conducted three studies in which a total of 81 users read Web pages. The initial two studies were exploratory and qualitative and were aimed at generating insight into how users read and what they like and dislike. The study that is third a measurement study geared towards quantifying the possibility benefits from several of the most promising writing styles identified in the 1st two studies. All three studies were conducted through the summer of 1997 into the SunSoft usability laboratories in Menlo Park, CA.
A major goal in the initial study was to compare the reading behavior of technical and non-technical users. And even though we had conducted some earlier studies with non-technical participants, the majority of our studies had used users that are highly technical. Also, given the nature of your site, almost all of the information collected from site surveys was given by technical users.
In Study 1, we tested an overall total of 11 users: 6 end-users and 5 technical users. The main disimilarity between technical and non-technical users did actually play call at participants’ familiarity and expertise with search tools and hypertext. The technical users were better informed about how exactly to execute searches compared to the end-users were. Technical users also seemed more aware of and much more enthusiastic about following hypertext links. At least one end-user said he is sometimes hesitant to use hypertext for concern about getting lost.
Aside from those differences, there appeared as if no differences that are major how technical and non-technical users approached reading on the internet. Both groups desired text that is scannable short text, summaries, etc.
The tasks were classic directed tasks comparable to those used in nearly all of our Web that is previous usability. Users were typically taken fully to the house page of a website that is specific then asked to locate specific all about your website. This method was taken fully to prevent the well-known problems when users need certainly to find things by searching the entire Web PollockWeb that is entire and Hockley 1997. Here is a sample task:
| you plan a visit to Las Vegas and would like to realize about a local restaurant run by chef Charlie Trotter. You heard it absolutely was found in the MGM Grand hotel and casino, but you want additional information about the restaurant. You start by studying the website for Restaurants & Institutions magazine at: http://www.rimag.com
Hint: seek out stories on casino foodservice You will need to find out: Unfortunately, the internet happens to be so very hard to utilize that users wasted enormous amounts of time looking for the page that is specific contained the answer to the question. Even when regarding the intended page, users often could not discover the answer since they did not look at relevant line. As an outcome, a lot of Study 1 wound up repeating navigation issues we got fewer results than desired relating to actual reading of content that we knew from previous studies and. Users Want to SearchUpon visiting each site, almost all associated with the participants wished to begin with a keyword search. “a search that is good is key for a beneficial website,” one participant said. If a search engine was not available, a number of the participants said, they might try with the browser’s “Find” command. Sometimes participants needed to be asked to try and find the information without using a search tool, because searching had not been a main focus with this study. |