Website Workshop: Usability


 

Color
Alignment
Link Color and Underlining
Whitespace is your friend!
Download time is important
Make the structure of your site clear!
Writing Text for the Web

Site Text must be scannable

1) Overly long Navbar titles
The Nav Bar titles should be as compact and succinct as possible. If there is any part of a title (or any web text in general) that you can strip out and still retain meaning for the user, do it. If the Nav Bar section names are too long the user can't scan them easily and is more likely to quickly click to another page.

Here is an example of some re-writing of these titles:

See how much easier the menu at right reads? You can scan it quite simply, and yet I've hardly taken out any of the meaning. Remember that you want to make titles as short as possible. Make every word count to the maximum.

Writing for the Web is a completely different ball game than writing for print. I have included some links for you to read below. It won't take long, but you can learn a lot about how to get maximum meaning out of very few words.

Microcontent: How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines
The Seven Qualities of Highly Successful Web Writing
How Users Read on the Web
Be Succinct! Writing for the Web
 
 
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