Do users scroll?

On a recent training day to do with writing for the web I thought I’d be learning about the more advanced details of the use of language on the web. Does the word ‘free’ attract people or put them off? Should you start your sentence with the word ’so’? How informal can you be before you get too close?

While the speakers did touch on language, the day focused on the usual web writing accepted practices. Keep sentences short. Don’t use slang/colloquialisms if you have an international audience. Front-load sentences with key words to help users find what they’re looking for and of course, include plenty of sub-titles to help them scan the page.

There were a few extra little nuggets I’d like to share with you:

• Line length
  Keep your line length between 65-75 characters. This is about the natural range for the eye to move while reading
• Don’t hide content
  If you think users will be put off by the length of the page then put in some sub-titles. Don’t hide content forcing users to click a ‘more’ button – they feel annoyed that they’ve had to ‘do something’ to get to the content
• Users like the IDEA of video
  They won’t necessarily watch it all the way though, or even watch it at all. Add the main points underneath the video in an easy-to-scan format such as bullet points
• Low literacy users
  Depending on your target audience, these users could make up a significant proportion. For your homepage you should aim your content to a reading age of 11-12 and for deep-link content you should aim for a reading age of 13-14. This might sound low, but even high literacy users will benefit in time spent, comprehension and satisfaction. These ages are based on the Fry readability formula
• Scrolling isn’t the enemy
  Unnecessary clicks are. Don’t spread content across several pages just to make the page look shorter – put sub-titles, more paragraph breaks and lists in instead. You can also ‘layer’ content to make it more attractive (more on that in a follow-up post). People will scroll if they’re confident they’ll find the information they’re looking for.

Christine attended the “Writing for the Web 2″ day of the Nielson Norman Group’s Useability Week 2009.

This post was originally published by Christine on Mon, 06/01/2009