Written by amedeo on June 3rd, 2008
Problem
Often, the who-what-where-when-why-how (and “what’s next”) get blended together in a way that is aesthetically pleasing (in terms of logic, musicality and pacing), but fail to offer easy scannability that Web reading behavior calls for.
As a reader, I have to run my eyes up and down a story to find facts that interest me [...]
Written by amedeo on May 6th, 2008
Most recent Alertbox column from Jakob Nielsen, the “King of Usability”:
On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.
Why I’m interested:
There is still a lot of room for the evolution of how text is presented on a news site, [...]
Written by amedeo on November 12th, 2007
Summary: Most users want short, scan-friendly content they can snack upon because it efficiently meets their needs. Occasionally your customers want longer, in-depth pieces. Provide both to optimize site engagement and efficiency.
Source: Jakob Nielsen: “Long vs. short articles as content strategy”
Points of interests:
Informavores consume information in a way that optimizes their benefits relative to the [...]
Written by amedeo on September 20th, 2007
When writing news for the Web, you must:
Present information in an easily scanned format;
Provide summaries; CNN.com does this well with Story Highlights at the top of its articles;
Recognize that sentence-extending musicality and cognition-consuming cleverness will drive readers to other sites that more efficiently transmit what makes news valuable: new information;
Use independently functioning information [...]
