To Keep Reader Interest on Web, Sites Work Hard to Make Stories Brief and Make Headlines Snappy, Interesting, and Also Brief, If They Can Do That And Still Get Their Point Across
Acknowledging that surfers on the World Wide Web are as short on time as they are on attention span, Internet sites are âworking hardâ at trying to keep both their headlines and the text of their site copy brief, concise, non-repetitive, and to the point, a move they hope will cause readers to look at more than just the headline, and also keep readers from giving up on a story or product description without ever making it to the second or third paragraph because the first paragraph was too long or convoluted, or failed to instill confidence in the reader that the rest of the story or description was worth reading, particularly if the first few sentences appeared to say it all or, worse, if they didnât convince readers that the ensuing text would be able to add much to what they had already read in the first few sentences or paragraphs of the story or description they are reading. âOn the Web, people donât really have long attention spans, so you have to keep your sentences short and avoid being overly long, and the information you impart in those sentences, that should be very brief and concise and snappy, if you can pull that off without failing to explain what exactly the story or description is about or says,â explained site design expert Jakob Nielsen. âOne way of doing that is to keep to a minimum quotes from people, be they other readers, customers, or so-called experts, that you can easily shorten or perhaps simply do without because what they are saying is repetitive or overly long or doesnât really say anything that you havenât already said before in your story or description.â