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What People Read on the Net
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Jim Moore
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Dec 22, 2002 21:07 PST
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What People Read on the Net
by Themestream Editors
August 16, 2000 - Posted 23:08 12/22/02
If you haven't figured it out, people are reading on the net. In fact,
you've just joined them. But how far will you read? Can I take you to
the next paragraph? Or will you tire of this early and click away?
A staff at the Stanford/Poynter Institute recently posted the
Eyetrack2000 results. And what did the researchers track during this
laborious survey of 67 people? These patient people measured and marked
the precise movements of 134 eyeballs while they read off the Internet.
The study found that the average user is getting his or her news online.
The Internet for most of these subjects is replacing the print
newspaper. More than that, readers are getting their fix of the things
that interest them the most – their passions! (That's good news for all
of you contributing to Themestream. This is the place for people to
live their passions online.)
Some interesting facts presented by the Stanford/Poynter team:
Everyone reads Sports – 70% of both genders seek out Sports articles.
A session of online reading averaged out at 34 minutes.
64% of photos were looked at on average one-and-a-quarter second.
This last highlight struck me as odd. It's commonly thought that photos
are an integral part of any article, but this would suggest that photos
don't have as much attention paid to them as one might think. Of
course, this doesn't propose how important photos might be to the form
of an article. Photos may be important to the reader as a visual
distraction, or relaxation, from the prose. This study didn't do much
speculation. In fact, studies seldom do.
So what exactly are people reading? Usability expert Jakob Nielsen
seems to think he's in the know. He's asking $70,000 for a three-day
seminar for his work, or you can get the discounted rate of $30,000 for
a thorough web site review. (Let the good times roll, Jakob. He won't
spend a dime, however, to make his site look any better.)
Mr. Nielsen has some astute remarks on how people read on the web, which
we can use to make our articles better. Some of the key points are as
follows:
highlighted keywords
bulleted lists
one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if
they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph)
All of these reflect the user's reading experience, reports Nielsen.
If these principles are integrated into your writing, they maximize the
user's time and efficiency. One extra thought from Jakob Nielsen that
we will spend more time with:
half the word count (or less) than conventional writing
While part of me agrees with the above statement, the other half aches.
You see, the Stanford/Poynter research found that people are reading
about 75% of what's on any single article page. It's my interpretation
that no matter what the length people will read 75% of it. If your
article is 1000 words, people will read 750 of them. If you article is
4000 words, they'll read 3000 of them.
Suck Editor Tim Cavanaugh doesn't agree with this Nielsen finding
either. At an online journalism conference in March of 2000 held by the
University of Southern California's Journalism school, Tim fervently
stood by the word count of his site's articles. He noted that most
sites have the capability to track the length of the average user
session. His findings? People are staying longer and reading more.
Furthermore, it would be an absolute wonder why a site like Salon would
continue to publish several thousand-word articles if people weren't
spending the time reading them. Salon breaks the articles up with
interlinked pages. They track how many pages a user views. Would they
continue to publish these lengthy articles if no one was reading them?
I don't have the patience for research. It takes a different breed of
person and I commend them. But in the end, it's just data. When you
ignite someone's personal interest, you can bet that they will read and
read and read on.
Hundreds of time-saving, money-generating tips and stories from
AMerica's largest online newspaper - TennTimes-the News.
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