There are three main reasons for most news websites to provide short intros to their written pieces (and to keep news short for that matter):
1) Web users are impatient.
2) For a news site to maintain its interest among the users it needs to be constantly updated.
3) Short pieces allow a greater variety of topics on show each time you access the site.
In order to manage this most websites only publish the first paragraph or even just the first sentence of a news piece. The BBC’s website, one of my favourites, is an excellent example of this. How often you access a new site for information and up-dates is either determined by the way it is managed (laid out) or if a website’s material is of specific interest to yourself.
However, the three reasons for presentation of material in brief that I mentioned at the beginning are not the only driving forces. Incidentally, research shows that people read considerably slower from a screen than from a printed source.
On top of that studies have shown that you can expect a new reader/visitor to spend less than 10 seconds making something out of your message or he’s gone. Consequently, one of the key rules to adhere to is to realize for whom you are writing. Have I? Have you?
Sunday, March 23, 2008
why shorter web-articles?
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3 comments:
In relation to reading of a screen; Our eyes are use to see through reflected light, from the sun or a lamp, which make it more unnatural and difficult to read longer pieces of text on a screen which exude direct light into our eyes. The younger generations (eyes) however, growing up with TV, computers and the internet, are apparently better equipped to do this. At the same rate the attention span seem to get shorter and shorter though, so I guess the better equipped eyes for reading longer texts, and faster, are not put to good use anyway.
I believe that the issue should not concentrate so much about the length of the articles but more about their "first eye" impression which could be achieved through a catchy title or intersting audiovisual caracteristics surrounding it!!
To an extent I can agree with both of you. Surely the material needs to be interesting to catch the reader's eye as George rightly points out, but as Mattias argues the attention span seems to get shorter and shorter.
That, I guess, can relate directly to material prepared for the computer generation where speed and limited length of features are key issues. I also like to think that computer games, where interactivity is the key, cause younger generations to be more restless in front of the screen.
The order of the day is action, action, action! And when you are reading, all the action goes on in your head. Perhaps that is simply not appealing enough?
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