February 14, 2011 at 10:35Usability mailing lists
- Tutorial
Good morning Monday, %% username %%
Today I would like to talk about what methods should be used, and what is better to refuse in mailing lists for my clients.
What is the purpose of the newsletter? Promptly inform the addressee of up-to-date information about their company / services / news. But most of the compilers of such mailings often do not think over the psychological factor, which plays a significant role. Interesting? Welcome to cat.
In order not to be unfounded, I will say that the following is not my mind’s creation, but the result of the work of Jakob Nielsen . Topic is a free translation of this article .
The big problem with many mailings is their volume. No need to put in a single letter the company's plans for 5 years in advance. It will be quite enough to describe in essence one or two paragraphs the essence that you want to convey to the addressee. If you think that a person should learn more about your “information”, give him an external link from a letter where he will read everything perfectly, if he needs it.
In the image on the left you can see a heat map of human attention. Extremely eye-catching areas are highlighted in red, the middle focus on attention is yellow, while blue nullifies the importance of space.
What does this card give us? First, always leave relatively empty areas - do not litter every corner. Do not make additional information in a third-party block very attractive, focus on the main content.
Here we can observe the rule of the "first two words" in the title. The idea is simple - the user reads the received letter fluently, filtering the "important" information for him, therefore the brain catches the first couple of words in the header. From this we can draw a simple conclusion - the semantic part of the title should be at its beginning.
When making announcements for anything, do not talk too much. Nielsen, as a result of his research, found that 67% of people simply do not read these announcements. Therefore, it will be acceptable to make the brief descriptions as concise as possible.
Why so ugly, you ask? The answer lies again in statistics from Nielsen. The user spends 51 seconds on average reading a letter, although it’s hard to call it a reading, because a person’s look examines the first 35% of a letter, which in turn hints at having at the beginning the most important information for the reader.
Studies have also shown that the recipient on average reads to the end only 19% of incoming mail.
Today I would like to talk about what methods should be used, and what is better to refuse in mailing lists for my clients.
What is the purpose of the newsletter? Promptly inform the addressee of up-to-date information about their company / services / news. But most of the compilers of such mailings often do not think over the psychological factor, which plays a significant role. Interesting? Welcome to cat.
In order not to be unfounded, I will say that the following is not my mind’s creation, but the result of the work of Jakob Nielsen . Topic is a free translation of this article .
Do not write novels!
The big problem with many mailings is their volume. No need to put in a single letter the company's plans for 5 years in advance. It will be quite enough to describe in essence one or two paragraphs the essence that you want to convey to the addressee. If you think that a person should learn more about your “information”, give him an external link from a letter where he will read everything perfectly, if he needs it.
Heatmap
In the image on the left you can see a heat map of human attention. Extremely eye-catching areas are highlighted in red, the middle focus on attention is yellow, while blue nullifies the importance of space.
What does this card give us? First, always leave relatively empty areas - do not litter every corner. Do not make additional information in a third-party block very attractive, focus on the main content.
Here we can observe the rule of the "first two words" in the title. The idea is simple - the user reads the received letter fluently, filtering the "important" information for him, therefore the brain catches the first couple of words in the header. From this we can draw a simple conclusion - the semantic part of the title should be at its beginning.
Announcements are not that important
When making announcements for anything, do not talk too much. Nielsen, as a result of his research, found that 67% of people simply do not read these announcements. Therefore, it will be acceptable to make the brief descriptions as concise as possible.
Why all this?
Why so ugly, you ask? The answer lies again in statistics from Nielsen. The user spends 51 seconds on average reading a letter, although it’s hard to call it a reading, because a person’s look examines the first 35% of a letter, which in turn hints at having at the beginning the most important information for the reader.
Studies have also shown that the recipient on average reads to the end only 19% of incoming mail.
To summarize
- Brevity is the soul of wit. Bring important information to the top of the letter;
- Optimize your headers. After all, the heading "Tips to improve the usability of mailing lists" will look better like this - "Usability of mailing lists, tips and tricks";
- Write essentially; avoid opening speeches and digressions. Instead, just make a key sentence prompting the action you expect from the reader;
- Use images that explain the essence of the letter. After all, it is so easy to perceive!
- Do not make a column with text more than 60 characters wide; this makes text perception more difficult;
- While this is obvious, use left alignment for a clear perception. An exception would be recipients reading from right to left.