Edelman digital trends series

Edelman’s Steve Rubel is publishing a series of  ‘insights‘ into digital trends.

I’ve read the first one (17 Feb, pdf 2mb) and it’s a pretty good overview.

Writing for the web: is less still more?

Ten years ago John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen published a paper called “How to write for the web“, opening with the announcement that “studies of how users read on the Web found that they do not actually read: instead, they scan the text”.

In Internet years, 1997 is several lifetimes ago. Nevertheless, Morkes and Nielsen’s findings are still used to support the number one rule of writing for the web: less is more.

Of course, recommending that people try to be concise in their writing is never a bad thing. However, the findings announced by “newspaper design guru” Mario Garcia at the World Association of Newspapers Conference this week might give some of us pause for thought.

Following eyetracking studies by the Poynter Institute into how readers respond to online vs print content, Garcia’s team found that “people read more deeply and for longer online, leading to a more efficient absorption of information”.

On average, readers looking at a story online read 77% of the text, while readers looking at a story in a broadsheet newspaper read only 62% of the text. Overall, 63% of stories were read to completion online, against 40% for broadsheet newspapers.

Writing for a news website is not the same as writing for a corporate website. Still, I’ve got a feeling that Garcia’s findings may turn out to apply more widely. It’s not 1997 anymore.

Links:

“Eyetrack for what readers want online and in print”

Poynter Institute Eyetrack07.

E-readiness report

The Economist Intelligence Unit has released its 2007 e-readiness rankings. Interesting reading, especially for those people working for large companies and wondering why and whether they should bother with a multilingual or worldwide web presence. Multilingual sites are hard work and expensive, but the report gives many reasons for making the effort and spending the money.

Also interesting in the report is the brief mention of efforts being made to help older people use new technologies (p13: “The all-inclusive Internet society”).

Also see the BBC story about the report (270407).