Cut to the Chase: A Minimalist Approach to Web Copy
When’s the last time you sat down and read an entire website ‘cover to cover’? Aside from news pages and blogs, most web content is there to direct readers to a practical service, and they don’t want to hang around wading through needless waffle to get it.
Here at C&M we subscribe to the “less is more” philosophy advocated by web usability guru Steve Krug in his book Don’t Make Me Think (New Riders, 2006).
It might sound obvious, but simply hacking down volume of words on a website can instantly and dramatically improve its usability.
Krug’s approach (Ibid, p. 45-48) boils down to three basic rules:
1) Cut the Crap. Resist the temptation to fill your homepage with what Krug calls “happy talk”, e.g. self-congratulatory puff about the company.
2) Reduce lengthy instructions by making functions self-explanatory.
3) Write concise copy. Getting rid of extraneous words reduces “noise”, promotes useful content and makes pages shorter and more accessible.
Sticking to these guidelines will make your web content memorably friendly like a good teacher, rather than laboriously avoidable like a ranting old uncle (apologies to ranting old uncles – we love you really).
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