![]() The participant's first two tasks were to search for specific facts within the site. Users' job titles included system administrator, systems analyst, software developer, and senior programmer. To evaluate the original and rewritten websites, 21 technical users participated in a 2-condition (original or rewritten site) between-subjects experiment. As with conciseness, we sometimes struggled to find what we considered a reasonable balance. Of course, it may not be possible (or desirable) to remove all promotional writing from a corporate website. ![]() We removed adjectives (e.g., "great" and "overwhelming"), buzzwords (e.g., "paradigm"), and claims that were not supported with evidence. Objective : Removing marketese from the text was not difficult to do. These changes were relatively easy to make and gave the pages a cleaner, more open design. We also included bullets, numbered lists, boldface and colored text to highlight keywords, additional headings, and shorter paragraphs. We added tables of contents and section summaries, as users in previous studies found them particularly useful. Scannable: Several changes were made to summarize and call attention to important pieces of text. Electronic thermostats, intercom systems, automatic sprinkler systems and alarm systems all will be tied into a coordinated control system linked to a central monitoring system. But picture a home network that ties all these things-and more-together into a coordinated facilities and environmental control system.įacilities management also will rely on new devices. To be sure, microprocessors can be found today in electronic thermostats, intercom systems, automatic sprinkler systems, stand-alone light timers and alarm systems that themselves are linked to a central monitoring station. Here is sample text from each site:įacilities management also portend high growth. Doing so required not only tightening of language, but also cutting of overly detailed information. Then we cut, trying to strike a balance between keeping useful information and making the whitepapers easy and fast to read. Total word count for the site was 2,425 words, which was 54% the length of the original version.Ĭoncise: This was the most difficult guideline to follow, because we were concerned about cutting out "too much." We began by separating the whitepapers using what seemed like natural section breaks. The rewritten version of the site consisted of eight pages that were much shorter on average (not counting the homepage, each page averaged 346 words, compared with 2,232 for the original). The original version of the test site consisted of three pages and used the existing whitepapers with only slight modifications: A special homepage and banner were created for the whitepapers, and external hypertext links were deleted so that evaluators would focus on only that site. Excerpts from both versions of the site are available at: articles/downloadable-files-to-replicate-web-reading-study/. We took two whitepapers (one on new-media processing and one on the market for Java) from Sun's website and used them to create two versions of a study website. (Concise text contains less information to process scannable text calls attention to key information and questioning the credibility of promotional statements seems to distract users from processing the meaning, our earlier studies showed.) Thus, our aim was to rework existing Web pages so that they would minimize cognitive load and enhance speed and efficiency. Applying the Writing GuidelinesĪ common thread between conciseness, scannability, and objectivity is that each reduces the user's cognitive load, which results in faster, more efficient processing of information. These results prompted us to apply the improvements to pages from Sun's website. When all three writing style improvements were combined in a final version of the site, usability increased 124%. ![]() We found improvements in usability for new versions of a site that were either scannable, concise, or objective (rather than promotional) in style. Our earlier studies of how people read on the Web indicated that they: prefer to scan rather than read, want text to be short and to the point, and detest overly hyped promotional writing ("marketese").
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