{"id":166,"date":"2014-07-22T16:30:55","date_gmt":"2014-07-22T21:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/mannj\/?p=166"},"modified":"2015-12-30T11:15:13","modified_gmt":"2015-12-30T16:15:13","slug":"when-people-actually-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/mannj\/2014\/07\/22\/when-people-actually-read\/","title":{"rendered":"When people actually read"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;Help users save time by focusing their scanning eyes on information that they actually want to read.&#8221; &#8211; Jakob Nielsen<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>A post from Jakob Nielsen&#8217;s blog, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/articles\/website-reading\/\" target=\"_blank\">Website Reading: It (Sometimes) Does Happen<\/a>, describes what makes web users stop scanning and start reading.<\/p>\n<p>He starts with what we know:<!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Users go to website for <strong>Information<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Users <strong>scarcely read anything<\/strong> during an average website visit.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But sometimes people do stop their scanning to read a paragraph in full. What makes them do that? Let&#8217;s start by saying why they read what they read. There are really only two options:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>They were looking for that information.<\/li>\n<li>Something piqued their interest.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Remember that people go to websites to get information, so it makes sense that if they&#8217;re looking for something specific, they will scan around the page until they find that information. But<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> we also notice<\/span> things that are interesting, regardless of whether we were looking for it. \u00a0Sometimes we&#8217;re trying to get people to go somewhere or read something they hadn&#8217;t planned on. For all these scenarios, the method is essentially the same.<\/p>\n<p>What does this mean for our websites?<\/p>\n<h2>Don&#8217;t make it hard for people to find what they need<\/h2>\n<p>Use headings and bulleted lists to make a page easier to scan. Get rid of unnecessary text.<\/p>\n<p>Build your pages <em>for<\/em> your visitors.<\/p>\n<h2>Practical Tips<\/h2>\n<p>Jakob&#8217;s suggestions can be summarized as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Use good information architecture<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; clear navigation\/menuing<\/li>\n<li><strong>Good page layout<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; use headings to easily guide the eye to the relevant part of the page<\/li>\n<li><strong>Most important information should be at the top of the page<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; 81% look at the first paragraph and it goes down from there. Only 32% look at the fourth paragraph.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Help users save time by focusing their scanning eyes on information that they actually want to read.&#8221; &#8211; Jakob Nielsen A post from Jakob Nielsen&#8217;s blog, Website Reading: It (Sometimes) Does Happen, describes what makes web users stop scanning and start reading. He starts with what we know:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/mannj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/mannj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/mannj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/mannj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/mannj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/mannj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":959,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/mannj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions\/959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/mannj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/mannj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/mannj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}