It's Nice To Hear Someone Else Say It.

For years I have have been saying that less is more when it comes to advertising. Print ads, direct mail and corporate collateral need to have a minimalist approach when it comes to copy.

Get your message across and move on to the next touch. But nooooooo, people don't like to listen to Big Pappa. Maybe because I ate too many cream cheese danishes when I was a kid. Maybe they don't like my bald head. Bald chubbiness aside, you can now listen to me! Why? Because other people with big names are backing up what I have been saying all along.

Jakob Nielsen, referred to as the "guru of web page usability" by the New York times, claims that " On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely." Eye tracking studies only confirm what Nielsen is talking about. Headlines and keywords all get scanned very rapidly allowing the user to determine if they want to dig deeper.



One big stat in the cited research was the maximum amount of text that a user was even able to read. As it turns out, a web browser, is only able to read at most 28% of the text if they spend the "normal" amount of time on any one of your site's pages. But more importantly, "users read half the information only on pages with 111 words or less."

So what does this mean? Well, the way I see it, there are several things you can do to increase the probability that your content will get read.

• Focus on engaging headlines and "pull outs."
• Use "read more buttons" more frequently. This will give the user the opportunity to choose whether or not they want to go deeper
• Find out what your customers want to know and give them just a touch less than that. This will illicit a contact and that is where sales begin.
  

Some other fundamental concepts that I have been trying to convey for years - The newest generations of internet users want information as easy to get to as possible and they want it NOW. This same generation is typically lazy and won't read everything you intend for them.

The challenge of course is keeping your content short and maintaining the appropriate levels of keyword density.

"If you target a broader audience or have sales cycles that are shorter than 5 years, you'd be wise to put your word count on a strict diet," said Nielsen. Well said sir. You have once again restored my faith in humanity and have added legitimacy to the one they call Big Pops.

I know this is a random closing thought, but as I was looking through some of the research, I came across this 1999 article about the top 10 design mistakes. For some reason I am obsessing about #2. He says that you shouldn't have links open in a new window. Given the fact this was written in 1999 before the invention of tabbed browsing, I will give him a little slack.

I completely disagree with this point. Maybe there is something wrong with me, but I want things to open in a new window/tab. In fact, I am so used to using ctrl+T, ctrl+W and ctrl+left click in FireFox that I don't think I could go back to old school browsing.

I like it when PDF's open in a new window. I like to be able to open the first 10 results of a SERP in a new tab and hit ctrl+w when I realize that there is nothing of interest on that page. I like my original window to stay in tact and to be able to go back to it when I want to. Especially if the page has a LOT of links that I want to explore.

What do you think? Do you like to have links open in a new window/tab? Let your voice be heard. Big Pappa wants to know.