Be Concise and Improve Usability on your Industrial Site

Jacob Nielsen, usability guru, recently published an article about the importance of writing concise, informative headlines on news websites. You can read the full article here – World’s Best Headlines: BBC News.  However, the guidelines for writing good headlines can easily be translated into writing good titles and headers for your industrial website.  Let’s take a look at what Jacob outlines as must haves for headlines -

•    short (because people don’t read much online);
•    rich in information scent, clearly summarizing the target article;
•    front-loaded with the most important keywords (because users often scan only the beginning of list items);
•    understandable out of context (because headlines often appear without articles, as in search engine results); and
•    predictable, so users know whether they’ll like the full article before they click (because people don’t return to sites that promise more than they deliver).

Let’s go over why you should apply these suggestions to your titles an headers of your site. Your title is the linked text in the search engine results.  So you want to keep your titles shorts – under 65 characters is ideal – because the search engines only display that many characters. It’s important to front-load your important keywords in your titles because the search engines put more weight on keywords in the front of the title in their algorithms, and they are easier for people to see in the search engine results. It’s also good to have your titles predictable to cut back on people clicking on your site and not finding what they want. Since most people scan copy as opposed to reading it, you want to keep your headers short and concise to make it easier for people to understand what your page is about.

Jacob Nielsen is considered by many to be the leading expert on website usability. By following his suggestions, you’ll make it easier for your customers to navigate your website to find the information they are looking for. This better user experience will ultimately lead to more conversions and sales for your business.

Share this: