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As posted by Neville and Donna, Jakob Neilson’s latest usability report, this time on blogs, highlights some user interface issues.
The issues are of equal importance to traditional (dare I say ‘mainstream’) websites, but I have a slight issue with one of his peeves.
Where he talks about sloppy linking behaviour, he is aggrieved by ‘here’ (as in “for info on that widget, go here“). Jakob seems to feel that the context of the link isn’t clear enough. But there is a readibility/redundancy issue here.
For example, in the above sentence you can very clearly tell that if you click on the link on the word ‘here‘ you will go to information about the widget. The problem with that is, exactly????
By suggesting that you put the full description of what you are linking to, you run the risk of excess verbiage and slowing down the scan reader who already comprehends what you are saying. If they are interested enough to read your post, they are probably interested enough to follow the link. They always have recourse to the ‘back’ button…
The redundancy of excess words applies equally to SEO (search engine optimisation) tricks. By ’seeding’ your post or article with your keywords you can certainly make the search engines like you more, but at the expense of reader comprehension.
Writing for the web, as Shel would no doubt tell you, is not as easy as people would have you believe. Like all things, sometimes it is worth leaving it to the professionals.
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