Thank you, David Letterman.

The Top 10 list rules the web — or at least, Buzzfeed. The number of Buzzfeed listicles with the numeral 10 in the headline outranked the next most popular numeral (15) by 142%, according to research by Noah Veltman and Brian Abelson, two Knight-Mozilla fellows. Fiddle around with their addictive “listogram” for details.

But just because Buzzfeed writers like the number 10 doesn’t make that the best number for your listicle. So how many items should you include? Here are eight thoughts about that:

1. Consider including more items.

Abelson found a slight correlation between Buzzfeed list length and the number of tweets the list gets: The longer the list, the more tweets.

But don’t forget: Tweeting doesn’t mean reading.

“We’ve found effectively no correlation between social shares and people actually reading,” writes Tony Haile, CEO of Chartbeat, which measures traffic for sites like Upworthy.

2. But don’t include too many.

Hundreds of items might overwhelm potential readers. “6 steps to 6-pack abs”? Maybe. 66 steps? Forget it!

And no matter what the headline says, there really aren’t “99 Things You Need To Know About Franz Ferdinand Before The 100th Anniversary Of His Assassination.”

3. And don’t include too few.

When it comes to lists, remember what you learned at Three Dog Night camp:

One is the loneliest number. Two can be as bad as one. It’s the loneliest number since the number one

Why?

• One item is an item. So no “Top 1 Reason Why ‘The X-Factor’ Is Going To Be Better Than ‘The Voice’.”
• Two items are a couple. So no “2 Excellent Parodies Of Amanda Palmer’s ‘A Poem For Dzhokhar’.”
• It takes three items to make a list. “3 Classy Ways To Get Drunk On St. Patrick’s Day“? Sure!

Besides, posts with headlines promoting seven or more items outperformed those with six or fewer, according to an internal study of HubSpot’s blog. While HubSpot still posts pieces with six or fewer items, writes Pamela Vaughan, HubSpot’s lead blog strategist, the inbound marketing experts don’t promote that quantity in the headline.

4. Embrace your oddness.

Oddly, odd numbers on magazine coverlines sell better than even ones, according to Folio:. Bloggers have taken note.

“It’s long been a superstition in the business — for years — that an odd number will do better than an even number,” BuzzFeed’s Jack Shepherd told the folks at Neiman Lab.

So 7 Steps may be more effective than 10 Tips.

5. Or maybe 10 is the magic number?

Lists with 10 items received the most social shares, according to research by BuzzSumo. The provider of content marketing analytics itself analyzed the number of shares of more than 100 million articles.

Top 10 lists had four times the number of social shares — 10,621 on average — than the second most popular list number: 23.

Runners up: 16 and 24.

6. Steer clear of 20.

“Yeah, I think probably people shy away from 20,” Shepherd told Nieman Labs. “Twenty feels real weird.”

7. But do use a number.

Numbers sell, because they indicate quantity and value in the information.

“Honestly,” Shepherd said, “I’ve often made posts where the post didn’t need a number, and then I’ll throw a number into the headline — just because people like that more.”

We know, Mr. Shepherd. We know.

8. Or don’t.

The best length for your list: the number of items your research turns up.

The post How long to make listicles appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Just 7% of adults around the world can manage conflicting requests to reserve a meeting room using a reservation system, then email people to let them know whether they got the room they requested.

Which means that if you create websites or other technological interfaces for technologically competent folks, you’ll miss 93% of worldwide adults ages 16 to 65, according to the 2017 Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, or PIAAC^[1].

How low can you go?

The results?

Adults worldwide weighed in at an average problem-solving proficiency rate of 278 out of 500. That puts us at level 1, or basic, problem-solving skills.

That means that, on average, these adults can sort five emailed responses to a party invitation into pre-existing folders to track who can and cannot attend. But we struggle to locate on a spreadsheet with 200 entries members of a bike club who meet two conditions, then email the information to the person who requested it.

Below average

How do you communicate information via websites and other technological tools in an environment where many people struggle to solve problems using technology? Learn to write web copy and plan websites that overcome some of the obstacles of learning online.

About the study

PIAAC is a large, every-10-years study of adult literacy, developed and organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The study looks at literacy and numeracy, as well as problem solving in high-tech environments. The problem-solving study tested subjects’:

• Knowledge of how different technological environments (email, websites and spreadsheets) work
• Ability to use digital information effectively; understand electronic texts, images, graphics and numerical data; and locate, evaluate, and judge the validity, accuracy and relevance of that information

From 2012-2017, the PIAAC studied the skills of 150,000 adults, ages 16 to 65, in 39 countries.

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^[1] Highlights of the 2017 U.S. PIAAC Results Web Report (NCES 2020-777). U.S. Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics.

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Call it the bailout point.

People reading news on an iPad spent an average of 78.3 seconds on stories that they didn’t finish. That’s according to EyeTrack: Tablet, The Poynter Institute’s latest eyetracking study.

So what’s a writer to do or webmaster to do?

Place a “gold coin” at the bailout point to keep people reading, Poynter researchers suggest. That could be a provocative question, a juicy detail, a plot twist or another element to regain interest.

If people read at an average of 200 words per minute, that means you’d put a gold coin about 250 words in.

Other bailout points to be aware of:

• People spent an average of 98.3 seconds on the first story they read on an iPad.
• People watch videos for an average of 1:15 to 1:30.

Bottom line: Overcome the bailout point.
Give readers a reason to stay.

Here are eight other findings from Eyetrack: Tablet.

1. Design for reading and scanning.

Half of online “readers” actually scan. Same’s true of iPad “readers.” Of the total audience in the EyeTrack: Tablet study:

• 52% scanned
• 48% read methodically

But break out older and younger readers, and those numbers change. The Poynter Institute looked at two different demographics for this study.

Digital natives. These 18- to 28-year-olds are among the first adults who don’t have strong memories of life before digital media. Of this group:

• 75% scanned
• 25% read methodically

PrintNets. These 45- to 55-year-olds have one foot in the print world, the other in the “Net” world. Of this group:

• 24% scanned
• 76% read methodically

Now, don’t decide that young people and scanners have attention deficit disorder: These folks spent as much time as older people and methodical readers absorbing information — they just did it differently.

“It’s the style, not the degree, of consumption,” says David Stanton, managing developer at Smart Media Creative, who worked on the study.

Mario Garcia goes further.

“There’s a scanner inside every methodical reader,” says the CEO of Garcia Media and founder of the Graphics & Design program at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

The reverse is also true: Scanners often read methodically once they find what they’re looking for.

2. Alert! Beware of distractions.

Not 99%, but 100% of study participants responded to alerts instantly, says Sara Quinn, Poynter Visual Journalism faculty member who directed EyeTrack: Tablet.

Just a reminder that all tablet readers are distracted readers.

3. Marry images and headlines for navigation.

EyeTrack: Tablet tested three navigational templates. In an exit interview, participants ranked them:

1. Carousel — 50% of study participants preferred this template.

Like NPR and Pulse, the carousel template offers an appetizing buffet of photos and headlines.

Downside: Because there’s no editorial hierarchy, this approach may be overwhelming.

2. Traditional — 35% of study participants preferred this template.

Like The Boston Globe and The New York Times, it offers a dominant photograph and lead headline, plus headlines for each of the other stories in the publication. Readers can find stories under four headings: news, sports, business and life.

Downside: Readers can’t see all the stories on offer.

3. Tile — 15% of study participants preferred this template. Like Flipboard, this template offers four images that highlighted one story from each category, but no headlines.

Downside: The lack of headlines made the stories in this template “mystery meat,” said one study participant.

Researchers felt that this design would have performed better — maybe best — if there had been headlines. “Marrying headlines to photos,” Garcia says, “that’s a glorious union.”

They shop; they buy. Study participants looked at 18 elements, on average, in the navigation before choosing the first story to read.

The more elements they reviewed before choosing, the further they read into the story. In fact, people who didn’t finish reading their first story looked at only nine items before choosing.

4. Design for swipers, not scrollers.

The current tablet design convention is to swipe to switch stories, scroll to read them. But participants in this study showed an overwhelmingly strong preference for swiping, at least in photo slide shows.

Participants handed an iPad in:

• Landscape orientation swiped 93% of the time
• Portrait orientation swiped 82% of the time

Garcia sees a movement toward design for swiping not only between but also within stories.

“Scrolling is so online,” he says, “so like 50 minutes ago.”

5. Think landscape, not portrait.

In exit interviews, participants expressed a strong preference for holding a tablet in horizontal, or landscape, orientation.

• 79% preferred landscape orientation
• 30% preferred portrait orientation

Why?

Because that’s the best way to watch videos, they said.

Best practice remains offering readers the chance to choose. But if you don’t have the resources to create apps in both modes, think landscape, not portrait, orientation.

6. Don’t get rid of ‘the chrome.’

Designers prefer to get rid of “the chrome,” the native navigation in browsers. Readers, on the other hand, prefer to use their browser buttons instead of navigational tools build into the content frame.

• 65% used “native controls” — the browser’s back button instead of the tools built into the content frame.

“This speaks to the importance of the familiarity of tools,” Quinn writes. “People will default to what they know if it’s available.”

7. Focus on photos and faces.

As with earlier eyetracking studies, people tended to enter a screen through a dominant element, generally a photograph. Faces in photographs and videos attracted a lot of attention.

8. Engage the finger.

Tablet design adds touch to the six key elements of electronic communication. Most people keep nearly constant contact with the screen.

• 61% of participants were intimate. That is, they kept their finger on the screen constantly — touching, tapping, pinching and swiping to adjust their view.
• 39% were detached. They carefully arranged a screenful of text before sitting back to read.

“Avoid the ‘frustrated finger’ when designing for tablets,” Garcia says. “Engage the finger as well as the brain and eyes.”

About the study

Using eyetracking gear, observation and exit interviews, Poynter watched 36 people interact for 90 seconds with real news stories on an iPad.

Participants looked at one of three prototypes for the project. Each prototype featured the same 20 stories but had different designs for the front page or entryway. Each story included a text narrative, plus a still photo, graphic, photo gallery, video or pop-up.

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Sources: Sara Dickenson Quinn, David Stanton, Jeremy Gilbert and Mario Garcia; “EyeTrack: Tablet Research,” Poynter Institute conference session at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Oct. 18, 2012

“Poynter Unveils Tablet Research Findings: Eyetracking Shows Direct Connection Between Storytelling Form and Engagement,” The Poynter Institute, Nov. 8, 2012

Sara Dickenson Quinn, “New Poynter Eyetrack research reveals how people read news on tablets,” Poynter.org, Oct. 17, 2012

Sara Dickenson Quinn, “Poynter ‘EyeTrack: Tablet’ research shows horizontal swiping instinct for photo galleries,” Poynter.org, May 4, 2012

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Your most important links are calls to action, writes HubSpot’s Kyle James. So how can you increase the chances that they’ll get clicked? Follow these five tips:

1. Avoid Fat Fingers/No Bars Syndrome.

Make “touch targets” at least 1cm × 1cm (0.4in × 0.4in) for mobile users.

2. Bold-face your most important links.

Visitors are 20% more likely to click on a bold-faced link, according to HubSpot research.

3. Go graphic.

Clickable images with text under them increased click-through rates by 100% in one Hubspot test.

4. Keep your call to action above the fold.

Visitors don’t always scroll.

5. Underline links and make them a different color.

Web users have learned to see underlined, colored text as links. Don’t make them learn a new approach for using your website.

“Users shouldn’t have to guess or scrub the page to find out where they can click,” writes usability expert Jakob Nielsen.

And if it’s not a link, don’t underline it. If you do, someone will click it. And that will confuse and irritate your visitors.

6. Make visited links a different color.

Reserve blue for unvisited links and use a clearly different, less saturated color for visited links, Nielsen suggests.

Some sites use gray for visited links, but Nielsen recommends that you avoid this practice. That’s because gray type is hard to read, and it’s often used online to show that something is unavailable.

7. Label links that do anything other than open a different webpage.

Let readers know if they’re opening a video or PDF by adding or [PDF] after the link.

Read Nielsen’s Guidelines for Visualizing Links and Link List Color on Intranets.
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Sources: Kyle James, “9 Ways to Optimize Your Links and Draw Attention to Your Calls to Action,” HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog, March 4, 2009

Jakob Nielsen, “Guidelines for Visualizing Links,” Nielsen Norman Group, May 10, 2004

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Think of links as the Goldilocks of microcontent: Some links are too long. Some links are too short. You want to write links that are just right.

Too long

Links are highly scannable. Blue underlined words stand out on a screen of black text on a white background.

But if everything stands out, nothing stands out. If your links are too long, your readers’ eyes may find nothing to land on.

The links in a PR e-zine, for instance, average 35 words. The longest tops out at 54. This one’s 32 words long:

That’s too long.

The solution: Link and bold-face the head; unlink and use plain text for the blurb. Like so:

That approach allows readers to scan headlines, then learn more from the blurb if they find something they like.

Too short

But if your links are too short, readers will have to read the copy around the link to understand what the link means.

Readers find this irritating. Plus, it slows them down, writes Jan H. Spyridakis, professor at the University of Washington College of Engineering.

MindHacks’ one-word links, for instance, are discombobulating. Who would click on article, acetylcholine, GABA, fentanyl, siege or BZ without knowing more?

They’re too short.

The solution: Rewrite sentences to create clusters of linkable words that give the context for the story. Instead of article, for instance, how about:

Or even:

Those five extra words add context, make the link clearer and the story more scannable — and may well increase clicks.

Just right

So how long should a link be?

‘Make links as short as you can and as long as you must.’ — Ann Wylie, writing coach
Click To Tweet

Make them 7 to 11 words long (PDF), suggests Jared M. Spool, CEO and founding principal of User Interface Engineering.

His research shows that visitors find what they’re looking for more efficiently on sites with:

• Longer links or
• Links followed by descriptive sentences

Visitors were less successful on sites with super-short links.

So “link length is less important than a good link description,” writes Marieke McCloskey, a user experience specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. “Use as many words as you need to accurately describe the page … while still being concise.”

In other words, as with most writing, make the link as long as you must and as short as you can.

But do keep it under 54 words.
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Sources: Marieke McCloskey, “Writing Hyperlinks: Salient, Descriptive, Start with Keyword,” Nielsen Norman Group, March 9, 2014

Jan H. Spyridakis, “Guidelines for Authoring Comprehensible Web pages and Evaluating Their Success” (PDF), Technical Communications, August 2000

Jared Spool, Tara Scanlon, Will Schroeder, Carolyn Snyder and Terri DeAngelo: Website usability: A designer’s guide (PDF). User Interface Engineering (North Andover, Mass.), 1997

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While news stories make up the bulk of the content on three European news sites, most of the most-shared stories are features.

Or so says Satu Vasantola, Journalist Fellow at Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

85% of the articles Helsingin Sanomat publishes are news stories, and just 15% are features. But 34% of the most shared stories were features.

Vasantola analyzed the most-shared stories from three European news sites:

• The BBC
• Helsingin Sanomat, the largest subscription newspaper in Finland
• Yleisradio, a Finnish media company

Features most shared.

Here’s what she learned:

• Features were the most shared articles at Helsingin Sanomat. 34% of the most-shared stories were features. But 85% of the articles the newspaper publishes are news stories, and just 15% are features.
• News articles and videos were the most shared at the BBC. 23% of the most-shared pieces were feature articles.
• Features were the most-shared Yleisradio pieces. 55% of the most-shared pieces were features.

Want to get shared more often? Vasantola suggests that you write stories that:

• Combine personal angles with national or international perspectives. People want stories about individuals as well as facts and statistics.
• Evoke feelings — especially positive ones. “Pure facts and figures are not enough; people want the facts to be served with emotions and stories of individuals, but stories that cleverly combine (inter)national and personal details,” Vasantola says.
• Make it relevant. Touch on everyday topics such as health, children and money.

“Interesting,” Vasantola writes, “is the new important.”

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Source: Satu Vasantola, “Do you think it is sex? You are wrong! This is what people share most on social media,” Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 2014-2015

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