Jason Unger

Surprise: Your Users Don't Have Time For You

Posted by junger - 08/27/08 at 09:08:13 pm

Your readers have better things to do than read what you have to say.

Don't believe me? Try these facts on for size:

• 79% of your readers scan text; they don't read it
• Reading on a screen takes 25% more time than on paper
• Intro texts are skipped by 2/3 of users

That's all according to Jakob Nielsen's research, as conveyed during Usability Week 2008 in New York.

Why don't they have time for you? They don't think you're useless, but they care more about themselves. Who can blame them?

Your readers come to you to get a specific piece of information, and then they move on.

So to keep them around, you should bury what they're looking for, right? Wrong.

Give them what they want — right away.

3 Tips for Fast and Easy Comprehension

To make you content easier to digest, use these three methods:

• Lead with the conclusion.
• Shorten your sentences. Use one thought per sentence.
• Visually separate key points with lists or bold.

Old media writers are horrible at this. They bury the lead somewhere in the third or fourth paragraph. Each paragraph is more than 3 sentences long. And the conclusion is at the end.

Don't worry about "giving away" the ending before the reader has done any work. That's not how they see it. Remember: you are not your users.

If you consistently deliver the information that your readers want and how they want it, they'll be back.

Make them happy. Give them what they want as quickly as possible. Or they'll choose someone else to give their time to.

You Are Not Your Users

Posted by junger - 04/28/08 at 04:04:12 pm

If there's one big thing I took away from Usability Week, it's that you are not your users.

It's a mantra every Web publisher should repeat constantly — in fact, you might want to even write it on a Post-It note and leave it in plain sight.

I run into this problem a lot with people who come from the print media world. The old school of thought is that you put out your product, take a survey or two of your audience, and make a change when necessary. But for the most part, your product is your product — you get to define it as you want.

When it comes to Web publishing (especially in the B2B world), your definitions are not always the same as your users. From Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox:

A simple example: Many sites use segmentation, in which users must click through to the appropriate site segment. Unfortunately, these segments often don't match the way customers think of themselves, and thus require them to peek through multiple site areas to find the right one. Even a simple segmentation such as company size isn't obvious. What counts as small? Better sites will annotate their choices with a definition (stating, for example, that their small business segment targets companies with less than 100 employees).

Your users come to you for a specific piece of information — the sooner you give it to them (and the easier it is for them to find it), the more likely they will come back to you.

Real estate sites are horrible at this. We've been looking for a bit now, and are generally annoyed at the lack of information (pictures, etc.) given on realtors' Web sites.

From their viewpoint, they want you to give them a call to find out more. But as a user, you want to gather as much information as possible before making that call. It's frustrasting when you can't.

The next time you think about re-organizing your site or restricting the amount of information you present, remember: you are not your users.