in common with other similar people:
1) They usually scan for the important info rather than read everything.
2) They dislike any form of promotional or propaganda writing.
3) They prefer to keep the reading short, sweet, and to the point.
To best achieve these goals, John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen recommend keeping writing in a way that is concise, scannable, and objective.
CONCISENESS
* Don't use filler words and sentences. Keep only pertinent info.
* Look for natural breaks. This wil help cut info.
SCANNABILITY
* Tables of contents and summaries are incredbly helpful.
* Bullets, lists, and colored text help highlight.
* These changes can be made to an existing page in minutes.
OBJECTIVITY
* Avoid strong adjectives (i.e. "great" and "overwhelming")
* No unsupported claims
* Some promotion must remain. A site needs to sell itself.
Similar changes were made to the Sun Microsystems website. Four tests were
used to determine if the "improvements" made a difference: Task Time (80% better
than the original), Task Errors (809% better!), Memory (100% better), and Subjective Satisfaction (37% better).
The final results produced a website that was calculated to be 159 PERCENT BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL! Results this good are hard to ignore.