Frontloading means that you start headlines, paragraphs and links with the most important words. The first words should communicate the subject of the headline, paragraph or link. This is not like writing a novel or a story, where you have time to be coy and not get to the point for a while. Youve got about a quarter of a second to grab that users attention or they won't read the rest of the sentence. Make the most of that opportunity.
If you do this, and you frontload your writing, especially at the top of the page, the user's eyes
will easily catch the most important info and they'll keep reading.
Here are some examples of good frontloading:
. Foo Fighters release new cd
. Barbeque beef ribs recipes everyone will like
. Tom Cruise stars in a new movie
Here are some bad examples that are not frontloaded:
. New cd is being released, it's by the Foo Fighters
. Everyone will love these great new recipes for barbeque beef ribs
. New movie is coming out and it'll star Tom Cruise
Put Links Where They'll be Seen
If you're putting web links in, make sure theyre where people will see them not in that bottom right-hand Corner of Death! Yes, people notice links in web content. They're usually bright blue and underlined, so people notice them. Many people even read links before they look at headlines.
Now that you know that, make it easy for them to get to your links by consistently presenting
them in list form or by slamming them right up against the left-hand margin.
Don't put your links in a sentence or they might end up in the invisible right-hand area of the
content.
Yes, this means you can't use the old "click here" convention, but for a good reason:
it
never worked very well anyway.
Here's an example of a good way to put in links:
There are several cool skateboarding sites you might want to check out. They really rock and
theyve got some great gear you can pick up for not a lot of bucks.
Skateboard·com
Skatefreak·net
Liv2skat·biz
Here's an example of a bad way to use links:
If you want to read about the latest in cool tricks, check out skateboard.com. For the lowdown
on which pro skaters are doing what and dating who, you want to see skatefreak.net. And one
of my very favorite places to read blog is liv2skat·com.
Don't Hide Headers
Remember how I said people look to the upper left of the page? If you've been centering your
headlines and subheadings, do you still think that's a good idea? Well, it's not. Yeah, I know
newspapers, magazines and books do it. So do lots of other sites. But that's just not where
people want to look first.
They've tested this. Believe it or not, about 10-20% of people just literally do not see centered headlines, particularly if they're in a hurry (and who isn't these days?) They look in the top left-hand corner of the content. And when they do, they see empty space, because the centered headline starts off to the right. So what do they do? Instead of scanning right, they move their eyes down. And they miss the headlines.
Centered headlines are wasted headlines. If you center them, you've hidden them from 10-20% of your readers. Might as well not have them at all. And don't even think about right-justifying them. Just left-justify them and don't ever worry about it again! A word about tables: the ideal table online is short, narrow and only used for data. When a table is too wide or too long, part of it is out of the reader's natural field of vision. So when they scan fast, they won't see all of it.