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What I'm hoping for here is a little bit of critique on what I've done wrong and what I've done right. I know for a fact that I've been more than a little carried away with things that scroll.
I appreciate that what I'm asking for is something that many of you get paid good money to provide to others on a daily basis, but any general pointers would be greatly appreciated. If you are willing and able to provide any then please send me an email and I'll send you the address of the site.
Nigel
I would put the URL in my profile but where some posts are concerned I tend to view profiles so that I can gauge a competitor's concerns/weak points and I don't want to be in that position as you'll no doubt understand. Probably sounds silly to some people but you have to make the most of what's available to you.
If anyone who can give me a few pointers wants to know the site address my email is <please see profile>
Thanks again
Nigel
[edited by: tedster at 5:46 am (utc) on June 23, 2002]
You commented:
>> I know for a fact that I've been more than a little carried away with things that scroll.
If you are just talking about pages that scroll, that was considered a near-taboo a few years ago. But recent user testing indicates a preference for a moderate amount of scrolling over needing to click too often. So you have probably made a wise choice.
Now if you are talking about lots of scrolling frames, iframes, scrolling div overflows and so so forth, that might be worth a second look and a new approach.
On the web, you will need to be much more brief than in print, so you need to adopt a style of writing that is clear, straightforward and without too much embellishment -- but don't make it boring in the process! This is because reading onscreen is more tiring than reading print, and most of the world's internet users have to pay telephone charges for every second they are connected to the net.
One point a lot of people don't get is this -- while the average, marginally targeted visitor needs you to get to the main point fast and keep everything short and sweet, your BEST target often wants, needs, and is very grateful for extensive information.
To accomplish both tasks, I use the "drill-down" advantage that hyperlinks provide. And when we really "get into it" I've discovered that even 6 screens full of content is not over the top when it comes to too much scrolling.
One of my sites publishes a rather hefty professional column every month, and we watch closely for the drop off percentages from page to page. The audience is already predisposed to want lots of details, so the idea of "above the fold" is moot, except that we always make the top area highly descriptive and enticing.
Over the past 4-5 months we've been testing various page lentghs for this column. We've disovered that 6 screens full (at 800x600) is a major drop off for us. More than that and we lose half the visitors. But anywhere from 4 to 6 is about the same - 20% drop off from page to page. The break point at 6 was rather dramatic.
One month we put up a version with 2-3 screens full per page (and therefore lots more pages). We got lots of complaints and will not return to very short pages.
Another issue is how the type is set. For body content on this site we use Verdana at 12px and 1.3em line-height. But the headings are in Arial, and we break them into two lines if more than 3-4 words are used. The idea is to make the heading easy to grab at one glance, rather than requiring any scanning whatsoever. It seems to work for us.
Another factor is making sure there is enough variety on the page to create visual landmarks -- no vast sea of unbroken copy. Emphasis color, headers, ornaments at logical breaks -- all of this works to make the page easy to deal with.
The drill-down features are an area I'm working with to a degree I haven't seen very much elsewhere, but we've had great user feedback about the style. The idea is that if there are two or three paragraphs in a long piece of content, then we break out those paragraphs into a separate pop-up page, linked to the main article. Someone who wants to explore more in that direction can click on the link and do so. Others can keep reading the main flow of the article.
This reduces the main content to an easy to handle web page, and easily supports the need of users who want to know more.
I've never been a fan of the "all above the fold" website. Every one I've seen (and worked on) just rolls off me like water off a duck. I think that idea will fade away into web history.
[edited by: tedster at 5:35 pm (utc) on June 24, 2002]
- Keep the content targetted rather than spread it out to thin. Getting content is quite easy it is keeping it all updated I find the most time consuming.
- Think big. Do not think it will be a small site forever, think that it could be a site with over 1,000 pages or more soon. Then think what details and bits/peices would you want on every page. SSI can help here. But it is best to plan it from the beginning.
- Get a 60 year old and a 4 year old (who have very little computer and net knowledge) to test the site. Can they find their way around easily or are they trying to click on the wrong things and or getting frustrated.
Thousand more things, but these bascis above jump to mind.
