Avoid these errors in the text of your website
Written on August 6, 2007 – 12:00 pm | by admin
The Web began as a way for researchers to share data, analyses, and conclusions with each other. The primary form of information on the early Web was text. In fact, the first Web browser could not display graphics-only text.
Despite the emergence of browsers and browser plug-ins that display images and structured graphics and play audio and video recording, the dominant form of information on the Web is still text. Text makes up not only the bulk of website content, but also the bulk of the user interface for accessing the Web: navigation links, button labels, error messages, help information, setting labels, setting values, and search terms.
The dominance of text on the Web makes it important to get the text in your website right. If the text in your website is wordy, hard to understand, inconsistent, or error ridden, chances are your site will be perceived by visitors as being of low quality.
Unfortunately, a lot of bad text can be found on the Web. Let’s look at some of the most common textual errors and how to avoid them.
Too much text
By far the most common mistake to make with text on the Web is to have too much of it. “Blocks of Text” is one of Nielsen’s top ten Web design mistakes.
Needless text is bad anytime but is especially bad on the Web. People don’t read websites, they scan them. They scan for words and pictures that match their goals. Verbose link labels, instruction, and messages just slow people down and “burry” important information.
Lengthy links
Textual links, when too long and especially when in lists of links, can be difficult for users to scan. If text is repeated in adjacent links, “scannability” and legibility suffer even more.
You can avoid these errors by keeping labels short (ideally 1 to 3 words,) avoiding long passages of prose and using headings, short phrases, and bullet points similarly to good text in presentation slides.
Speaking “Geek” and calling site visitors “User”
Text in websites and Web applications, as in desktop software, is often written in programmers’ technical jargon, making it incomprehensible to the software’s intended users. This is known as “speaking Geek.”
Although Web developers come from a wide variety of backgrounds, many have programming backgrounds. When writing text for websites, they often use programmers’ jargon. Why? There are several reasons: they don’t realize it’s jargon; they can’t express themselves in nontechnical terms; they expect computer users to learn the jargon; they don’t have time: “someone will fix this before we go live!”
Geek speak can appear anywhere there is text in a website. Sometimes it is in instructions the site provides. Sometimes it is in error messages. Sometimes it is in the names of commands site users have to invoke to accomplish anything.
One form of speaking Geek is referring to site visitors as “users.”
“Users” is what we (software and Web developers) call people who use our systems. It is a fine term to use when we are talking with other developers. It is part of our professional jargon, our way of communicating succinctly with peers. But “users” is not how people refer to themselves. Well, maybe heroin and cocaine users refer to themselves as “users,” but nobody else call themselves that.
Websites should be designed from the point of view of the people who will use the website, not that of the site’s designers or developers. Therefore, websites that call users “user” to their face are committing an error.
You can easily avoid this error. Using sensible words like “customer” and “member” instead of “user” costs next to nothing. Any company or organization could do it. Because this mistake is so easily avoided and corrected, there is no valid excuse for calling users “user” in a website.
Source: Web Bloopers: 60 common web design mistakes and how to avoid them.