Writing Matters

Your Web Content Is Hurting My Eyes and My Brain

Dear U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,

Usually I comment on the quality of the writing at a web site, but I've got to talk to you frankly today. The text on your home page is hurting my eyes:

• Your masthead is right-aligned
• Your left column is centered
• The labels for the main sections of your site are left-aligned (white text on a blue band) but each item listed below is right-aligned, which leaves a ragged blank mess on the left

SEC, I don't know where to look. My eyes are hopping around everywhere; I am conducting a very unproductive experiment in scanning. Maybe you could make your page look more like the Food and Drug Administration's home page. The FDA's isn't perfect, but the text is left-aligned.

SEC, please bone up on the usability research on text alignment. For homework, you must read:

• Right-Justified Navigation Menus Impede Scannability by Jakob Nielsen
• Eye Gaze Patterns while Searching vs. Browsing a Website from Usability News

And, SEC, whatever you do, please do not use the HR Management home page as your model. The only thing worse than text with hard-to-scan alignment is text that moves.

-- Leslie O'Flahavan

Epic Fail: Art-House MovieTheater's "How to Buy Tickets" page

We're lucky to live near the American Film Institute's Silver Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland, a beautifully restored 1930s theater that offers satisfying alternatives to multiplex films. But AFI's website is a nightmare if you want to complete the simple transaction that will keep the theater in the black: buy tickets online.

AFI's home page sports a prominent Buy Tickets link. But, inexplicably, you can't buy tickets on the How to Buy Tickets page, a page that truly fails task-oriented users:

• There's no link to the Buy Tickets page, though it would be safe to assume that a user who's reading instructions on how to buy tickets wants to buy tickets.
• The paragraph under the heading Online includes this sentence: "There are many links on this site that you may choose to get to the purchase point, such as: Now Playing, Films by Title, Film Series and Calendar..." but doesn't actually link to any of those links. This kind of meta-writing is always a bad sign: copy that refers to links without linking, pages that begin  "On this page, you will find ..."

To be fair to AFI, I decided to compare its online ticket purchase process that of similar theaters. Who knew that art-house movie theater web sites comprise the Make-It-Difficult-To-Buy-Tickets genre?

• The Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts presents a small Tickets link under its description of each film, but site-wide it has placed the Buy Tickets links under the Buy Stuff label in the main navigation. You have to scroll way down to the bottom of the Buy Stuff page—past the travel mugs, gift cards, posters, and t-shirts—to reach the Buy Tickets link.
• The Enzian Theater in Maitland, Florida is better. The site lacks a Buy Tickets link in its main navigation, but the home page text does explain "Click Show Times to Purchase Tickets" and this sentence appears above the showtimes on each film-specific page.
• The Film Forum in Manhattan gets it right with a prominent Buy Tickets link in the main navigation. Even better, the drop-down from the Buy Tickets link lists the films currently showing, the calendar, and a couple of explanations of when you can or can't buy tickets online (albeit with some weird double asterisks).

Helping users complete tasks is a website's highest calling. If you want your site to be task-oriented, take a look at these excellent offerings from Webcontent.gov:

• Step-by-Step Guide: Roadmap to a Task-Focused Website (PDF)
  
• Strategies for Determining Top Tasks
  
• Task-Focused Templates and Resources
• Free webinar for government employees: Three Essential Tips for Creating a Task–Based Website – Jan. 13, 2010

  -- Leslie O'Flahavan 

Research Report: Old Writing Rules Apply to New Social Media

While updating our web writing courses, I've been scouring usability research to find new studies that apply to web writing. The findings from two separate research studies from the Software Usability Research Laboratory (SURL) at Wichita State University remind me that old web writing guidelines apply to new media—social networking sites. Both studies flagged common writing issues—confusing and unfamiliar terminology, and inadequate user feedback and error messages—as problems that harm usability.

1. Usability Evaluation of Three Social Networking Sites. The study evaluated the usability of MySpace, Facebook, and Orkut. Users completed 10 tasks for each site, including adding new information to a profile, making a photo album, and changing notification options for messages. Users rated the difficulty of each task and their satisfaction with each site.
2. Trick or Tweet: How Usable is Twitter for First-Time Users? Users performed eight tasks on Twitter, including creating an account, posting a tweet, and responding to a tweet. Users rated the ease of use and their satisfaction with the site. 

Confusing and Unfamiliar Terminology
SURL researchers found that inconsistencies in link terminology resulted in users' failure to complete tasks. For example, My Space uses the Term “My Account” as a link. But clicking on the link brought up a page with the heading “Settings.” 

Users were confused by unfamiliar terms. MySpace users clicked on “Photo Cube” expecting to make a photo album. They found that “Photo Cube” is a function that allows users to print photos. Twitter users were unclear about whether to use “Profile” or “Setting” to edit their information.

Not surprisingly, most new users “had difficulty learning the ‘language’ that was unique to Twitter.” What was the difference between followers and following? Users were confused about Twitter-unique terms such as “RT” (retweet) for reposting a message from another user, the use of @symbols to indicate usernames in tweets, and the use of hashtags (#) to indicate topic tags for messages.

Twitter language proved so confusing that users had very poor success rates in some tasks: Only 15.4% were successful in sending a message and only 38.5% were successful in replying to messages. Users concluded that Twitter was “complex and felt they would need to learn quite a bit before using it.” Participants reported that "they would not use the service often.”

Poor Feedback and Unhelpful Error Messages
Poor feedback and unhelpful error messages also contributed to the failure of social network users to complete tasks. MySpace provided a poor error message to users who forgot to give their photo albums a name. Twitter users often weren’t sure whether they had successfully completed a task  such as sending a message. They were looking for feedback, a completion message or visual confirmation—an icon or a change in font color—to confirm their success.

Tips for Applying the Research to Your Writing
The studies’ usability findings are specific to social networking sites. But applying the recommendations to your writing will improve the usability and user satisfaction for both traditional and new media websites. 

• Use terms consistently. Don’t change language mid-stream. For example, is “editing” a profile the same as “updating” a profile? If so, choose one term and use it throughout the site. Consistency is especially important for links because the repetition of link language assures users that they’ve landed on the correct page. If users click “My Account,” the landing page should be labeled “My Account” not ‘Setting.”
• Use plain and intuitive language. The link “print photos” is more intuitive than “photo cube.”
• Explain new terms. You may think a term is self-explanatory, but first-time users may not know your language: tweets, followers, following, photo cube, wall. Provide a brief explanation of terms when users encounter them or link to a glossary.
• Provide helpful feedback and useful error messages. Provide confirmation messages to users: “You have successfully added photos to your album.” Write error messages that explain why the user failed. “Your user name and password do not match” is more helpful than “login failed.”

--Marilynne Rudick

World Usability Day Offer: Free Plain Language Consult, Training, Resources from Webcontent.gov

The folks at Webcontent.gov really know how to celebrate World Usability Day, which falls this year on November 12, 2009. It won't be just another stale-donuts-in-the-conference-room party, no sirree. For this year's World Usability Day, Webcontent.gov has a great free offer for all you web managers and usability analysts:

Build your Plain Language skills and celebrate the sustaining power of Usability + Plain Language on Thursday, November 12, 2009 at this year’s World Usability Day!

• Sign up for a FREE “mini-consultation” by phone with a usability or plain language expert to improve your government webpage or document
• Register to attend a FREE in-person plain language training on Nov. 12  in Washington, DC near Union Station
• Use our Plain Language + Usability Resource Kit to conduct a World Usability Day activity at your agency

Register and find more information at World Usability Day 2009 on Webcontent.gov

With questions, contact Nicole Burton, Usability Specialist at [email protected]

-- Leslie O'Flahavan

How to Write a User-Friendly "File Not Found" Page

When my recent search for USAID information on preparing your family for an avian flu pandemic dead-ended in a 404 "File Not Found" page, I expected to head back to the drawing board: Google. Then I took a closer look at USAID's error message page. (Click on the thumbnail to get a full-size, readable view.)

Rather than stranding the user, it tries to help by:

• Linking to the USAID home page where the user may be able to get her bearings and start the search again
  
• Linking to the site map, which may seem like a "vintage" method of way-finding but which some users actually prefer
• Linking to the Help Desk, a page that explains in easy-to-read text what each of the main content categories contains, what drop-downs are, and the right-hand navigation relates to the content on each page
  
• Providing a search field and allowing the user to search all/part of the USAID web site or the Internet instead.

Now THAT's attention to detail.

Do you have a favorite "File Not Found" page? (Am I really asking this question?!) If so, let us know.

-- Leslie O'Flahavan

P.S. I never did find the exact avian flu page I had been looking for, but I did use the search field in the "File Not Found" page to find other relevant info.