Jakob Nielsen, also known as, “the king of usability” has a PhD in human-computer interaction from the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen.  He has a

Source: http://blog.briandjohnson.com/context_continuity/2010/07/jakob-nielsen-t-smartest-guy-in-the-room-on-ebook-usability.html

background in software engineering and has focused largely on designing websites to increase usability for viewers.  Nielsen is the author of the article, “How Users Read on the Web,” in which he discusses the different approaches to writing on the web and what approach is most effective. Nielsen explains that when people read websites, they don’t read the webpage. Instead people scan the webpage for keywords, sub-headings or lists.  He conducted a study in which he made five different webpages with the same basic information on them. The different types of webpages included: Promotional Writing, Concise Text, Scannable Layout, Objective Language and a Combined Version. The Combined Version used a combination of concise, scannable and objective writing techniques. Nielsen had the same group of people view all five webpages and found that the usability for the Combined Version webpage was the most effective, increasing the usability 124%. This is an example of the Combined Version of text:

In 1996, six of the most-visited places in Nebraska were:

• Fort Robinson State Park
• Scotts Bluff National Monument
• Arbor Lodge State Historical Park & Museum
• Carhenge
• Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer
• Buffalo Bill Ranch State Historical Park

This form of a webpage is extremely usable because it allows a user to scan it quickly and obtain the information on the webpage easily and efficiently. Reading Nielsen’s article makes it clear just how important it is to be concise while writing on the Internet. This made me interested to find out more about what makes a webpage more usable. So, I read the article, “World’s Best Headlines: BBC News” by Jakob Nielsen. He discusses what makes a good news headline on the Internet. Nielsen states that the most important elements in a headline are: short, rich in information scent, front-loaded, understandable out of context and predictable. He explains these five elements,

• short (because people don’t read much online);
• rich in information scent, clearly summarizing the target article;
• front-loaded with the most important keywords (because users often scan only the beginning of list items);
• understandable out of context (because headlines often appear without articles, as in search engine results); and
• predictable, so users know whether they’ll like the full article before they click (because people don’t return to sites that promise more than they deliver).

He gives examples of some good headlines (all of which come from the BBC), and they are clear, concise and contain an average of five words. Conversely, the example he provided of a bad headline was long and too wordy. This article resonated with me, because I’ll never read a headline if it is too long and takes a lot of effort to read. This prompted me to surf the web to find some good and not so good examples of news headlines….

Good Headlines: From CNN.Com

1. Obama v. Romney: World is watching

2. Salon shooting leaves 4 dead

3. Hawaii: The state that doesn’t vote

All of these headlines meet the 5 criteria set out by Nielsen. These were all headlines that I was personally intrigued by because they were short and grabbed my attention. Here are some bad headlines I found from FoxNews.com…

1. Latest Intel Disclosures on Libya a Planned ‘Defense’ of Administration?

2. Florida Ripped for Plan to Set Student Goals by Race

3. Kennedy Cousin to Get Parole Hearing After Murder

These headlines, while they were information rich, seemed too wordy and detailed to grab my attention. Fox News did have some shorter headlines on the front page of their website, however these three were the top headlines meant for the reader to see first.

Overall, I felt that Nielsen’s articles on how to write a webpage was incredible informative and are things I will keep in mind when writing my own webpages.