Writing for the Web? Keep it short

These lessons from UX researcher, Jakob Nielsen, help drive a few points home. In short, his eye-tracking studies show that copywriting should be kept as short and concise as possible.

• The first ten seconds is critical.The average page visit lasts a little less than a minute. That's just enough time to read a quarter of the text on a full page. Takeaway, keep it to a few sentences, or make the top paragraph contain all the information you really need. Here's the good news, if they make it past 20 seconds, the chances they'll stay to read the rest of the content is very high.
• Readers are only interested in 20% of what's on the page. On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.
• The back button is the third most used feature on a website. It's the rip cord people pull when they don't find what they want on your website. Don't break it, respect its utility, be glad it's there, but pray to the internet gods they don't use it.
• Write content so it can be scanned. If you track what eyeballs see on the page, you'll draw what they call an inverted pyramid. Headlines and content at the top of the page make the "base" of the pyramid, and scattershot scans of the rest of the page make the "tip." Otherwise, eyeballs tend to be drawn to and make slight rest upon highlighted sub-headings, highlighted keywords, bulleted lists, and one idea per paragraph.
• Video content should be kept short and removed of talking heads. Online video differs from TV in that TV is a passive experience while multimedia users tend to drive their own experience. Nothing removes the fact that talking heads are boring and the skip button is omnipresent.
• All of the above is true for mobile content, but intensified. Desktop copywriting must be concise, mobile copywriting must be _even more concise_.

This reflects the eye-tracking studies I've seen elsewhere, including those during my time at Google. There are a lot of tricks here, and it should be noted that a lot of these tricks are particularly applicable anywhere on the web. In fact, writing for accessibility and SEO more often than not aligns with writing for the attention spans of most audiences.

Shiny Tin Foil to Play With

I've been busy with a new house, baby, and job. I have a lot to write about, but have focused all available blogging energy into switching template designs between the menu of available templates on Blogger. I think I like this design enough to keep it around for a while.

If you want to catch up on my most recent work, visit Dropbox.com. I'm the Technical Writer there.

How The Kindle Can Save Newspaper

Tech news blogs everywhere are talking about the new Kindle DX, the 8.5 x 11 inch version of Amazon's e-book reader. It's practically the same as the current smaller sized Kindle (complete with annoyingly large and unnecessary keyboard), except capable of handling large layouts found in textbooks, newspapers and magazines.

If you want details, I suggest checking out (my former employer) Wired's Gadget Lab take. The question on many blogger's mind is, will it take on and if it does will it save newspapers? I think in the hands of a newspaper organization savvy enough and if the Kindle, like iPods and iPhones, get popular enough to where almost everyone has one, it is quite possible it can.

I like reading GigaOm a lot, but I think his article under the headline "Why The Kindle HD Can't Save Newspapers" fails to deliver on its promise. His strongest argument:

Comparisons are being made to the iPod, which came at a desperate time for the music industry. But while after eight years, the iPod is a megabillion-dollar business, the music industry is still in the toilet, with digital sales failing to grow fast enough to cover the drop in sales of physical CDs.

He's right in comparing the Kindle to the iPod. But I think he's confusing mp3s and the iPod like he's confusing newspapers and the Kindle. We can all agree the solution to the newspaper's problem isn't the ink it's written with or even the content in many cases. It is the fact that newspaper organization's chosen method of delivery is woefully obsolete and the content is now competing with free.

Because of those issues, its revenue source, advertising, has moved on with its readers to a fully functioning, versatile, useful, trackable and generally more accessible internet. It just so happens its competition, the "free" package, is on a much more advanced syndication engine: the internet. I should say advertising budgets are moving, albeit very slowly, and the transition has just begun. I should also say that advertising online is amazingly cheap compared to its newspaper equivalents, but I imagine that will change over time.

This is a nutshell version of Om's argument: The Kindle, Google, and the internet is a technological solution to an outdated business model; It won't save newspapers any more than changing the font would. Superficially, he's correct. Printing a newspaper or magazine on high quality paper will never possibly solve the medium's competition and business problems.

However, it would be a mistake to shrug it off completely. How these delivery methods can save newspapers is a more relevant discussion -- one that makes much more sense in the context of how new media can help save the news, rather than how technology won't. For instance, the Kindle is equipping itself with the very tools that could help newspapers be more successful in this new highly competitive internet-enabled playing field.

The primary way it can help is by providing a reasonable utility to allow news businesses to charge for content. This is a far more challenging problem than it sounds (look up the history of micropayments on the internet). But we're entering a world where news has to compete with free. Ad revenue goes to  where the readers are, and readers are going to free content. To be competitive, newspapers will have to make their quality content worth it.

The Kindle is meeting the competition by providing a package that makes it possible to get news seconds after it happens and from any source (it is packaged with a minimal web browser). It is beating other delivery methods such as the computer or mobile phone by making the battery life longer, the screen bigger, the content source of higher quality, giving out free internet access and making it possible to read in the sunlight. So when bloggers claim the Kindle is newspapers' (or a news provider's) best chance, I tend to agree. When professors start requiring students having a Kindle to get textbooks and readers online, it solves issues of access years down the line (a bold and smart move by Amazon, that).

New media and the Kindle (when it gets cheaper) CAN save news agencies, but in all likelihood, by the way these businesses are operating so far, it won't. It may take years for the Kindle to get cheap enough to bundle them with newspaper subscriptions, or ubiquitous enough to maintain an editorial budget. It could take years to make this a reality. I don't see newspapers and magazines surviving long enough to make this happen. I don't mean to be so pessimistic, but the more I see the businesses behind newspapers cut off their online divisions to save their print publications, well, it just doesn't look good.

However, news in a healthy democratic nation will always be in demand. Thanks to the success of bloggers, it looks like it will always be in supply too. The challenge for newspapers, is getting to a point where they are willing to try a new business model and bet the bank on something like the Kindle or online editions. Graciously, I offer Om a more accurate way to put it: the Kindle may not save the newspaper, but it can't hurt.

The Birth of the Internet Press

Clay Shirky on the death of the newspaper:

The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model. So who covers all that news if some significant fraction of the currently employed newspaper people lose their jobs?

I don’t know. Nobody knows.

Found this late last night thanks to Jeff Veen, who is happy to be an entrepreneur instead of his previous profession, a journalist. First off, Shirky is a New Media Professor and runs the conference circuit as well, in case you were wondering. Second, this is a very decent obituary.
I think I've seen the result of new media being offloaded to that "experimental" area where it could be ignored en masse.

As I'm sure we'll see more obituaries for newspapers, and a good first step towards the more importnant discussion; where is journalism is going? What is promising is that I've seen this article being passed around on microblogs and blogs all day, which in and of itself may give you an idea of what will replace newspapers.*

Comparing the internet to the Gutenberg press is a decent analogy. In its chaos, it was ultimately as devastating as it was rewarding. The winners in the long run will be the consumers, many of whom will have a greater hand in shaping and forming the news.

The Gutenberg press empowered people the ability to read. The internet is and will empower people to write. Don't cry over the death of the newspaper for too long or fret for the future of journalism, it is the dawn of a very exciting new day.

[First posted on my favorite microblogs and reposted here.]

Oscar Success

 

PHOTO COURTESY CLIFF1066 VIA FLICKR AND CREATIVE COMMONS

The 2009 Oscars broadcast from Los Angeles, CA.  I agreed with Danny Boyle's Best Director speech. I liked it. I thought it was remarkably well done and classy -- more intimate, definitely not over the top, and it felt like a awards show and a tribute to Hollywood; the way it should be.

Compared to past Oscars, it felt less like a hammy affair and more like a regal ball. In fact, Hollywood stars from the golden age probably would've felt more at home here than in the stifling cruft-filled productions in the far more overzealous and melodramatic affairs of the past. There was a giant dose of humility in the theater, it seemed, and a lot of choking up at the appropriate parts. Most of all, it felt like Hollywood was back again -- and stars were stars, instead of egocentric maniacs shouting out to their myriad long lists, or those pretending they are simply just too cool to care (about their own careers and the industry) in between the long drawn out comedic stylings of the host for nothing more than courtesy laughs and face time.

On a tangent, I did kind of wonder if the times lent itself to a broadly more responsible and classy affair.  Perhaps the days of reckless abandon are behind us or left in the wake of classier stars like Anne Hathaway and even Queen Latifah.

The middle number did fall flat though. To Baz Luhrman I say, get it together. Later, Bill Maher came off like a jackass of self-promotion. Those things aside, all in all I watched the whole thing all the way through without wanting to gag. I'd call that a success.

This post was taken from an email I sent to The Rob and Jeff. Upon realizing I write more in emails than I do on the blog, I ported the post here. What the hell, right?