Readers are busy. Fluff takes space. Space takes time. So let’s cut the fluff and get on with it.

To cut the fluff, aim for a fact-to-fluff ratio of at least 1:1.

How do you find your ratio?

Pass the yellow highlighter/red pen test.

Try this test:

1. Highlight all your abstract claims, ideas and concepts with a yellow highlighter.
2. Underline all your concrete evidence — fun facts, juicy details, examples, anecdotes, case studies, statistics and so forth — with a red pen.

What should your copy look like? At least as much red as yellow.

Remember what Texans say about people who are “all hat, no cattle.” Too many pieces of corporate web pages are just that — puffy, overblown chest pounding with little solid evidence to back up the claims.
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What does most corporate web copy look like? A sea of yellow broken only by the occasional speck of red.

To improve your ratio:

1. Increase fact. Add “proof” in the form of hard evidence — statistics, analogies, facts, examples, stories, testimonials — to all your claims.
2. Reduce fluff. Cut hyperbole, adjectives, adverbs and other puffy prose. Strip your copy of “marketingese.”

Here’s how:

1. Increase fact.

What convinces people to do business with your website? According to research by the Nielsen Norman Group, it’s facts, not fluff:

1. Level of detail: 41%
2. Layout: 16.7%
3. Visual design: 14.5%
4. Features: 8.2%
5. Tone: 6.8%
6. Deals: 4.4%
7. Price: 3.8%
8. Can’t be classified: 2.7%
9. Brand: 1.9%

“Visitors overwhelmingly prefer detail. But they don’t want to be overwhelmed by it,” says Kate Meyer, user experience specialist with Nielsen Norman Group.

If your web page is seriously lacking in the kind of detail that makes visitors want to work with you, increase fact.

Make like a lawyer. Prove your claims. Dig up concrete details — numbers, comparisons, examples and third-party testimonials, for instance — to prove your assertions.

Remember what Texans say about people who are “all hat, no cattle.” Too many pieces of corporate web pages are just that — puffy, overblown chest pounding with little solid evidence to back up the claims.

Don’t let that describe your web page.

2. Reduce fluff.

The second way to improve your fact-to-fluff ratio: Reduce fluff.

“The more florid the descriptions, the more users tune them out and go elsewhere. Sadly, the web is so smothered in vaporous content and intangible verbiage that users simply skip over it.” — Jakob Neilsen, principal, Nielsen Norman…
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Cut hyperbole, adjectives, adverbs and other puffy prose. Strip out “marketingese.”

This promotional language reduces reading, according to Kara Pernice, Kathryn Whitenton and Jakob Nielsen, in How People Read on the Web.

So:

• Cut hyperbole. Minimize modifiers.
• Avoid marketingese and other empty, puffy prose.
• Present information without exaggeration, subjective claims, or boasting.

That’s important.

“The more florid the descriptions, the more users tune them out and go elsewhere. Sadly, the web is so smothered in vaporous content and intangible verbiage that users simply skip over it,” writes Jakob Neilsen, principal, Nielsen Norman Group.

“The more bad writing you push on your users, the more you train them to disregard your message. Useless content doesn’t just annoy people; it’s a leading cause of lost sales.”

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Yes, reading that blog post does make your butt look bigger. But mushy thighs are just one of the symptoms of screen reading.

In fact, the side effects of reading on the screen are starting to sound a lot like the insert in my asthma medication.

Every time you write a blog post, web page, news release or social media status update, you are subjecting your readers to:

Back, neck and shoulder pain

Lugging your iPad and iPhone around can be a pain in the neck. And the back and shoulders.

Americans are experiencing more back, neck and shoulder problems because of their handheld devices, the American Chiropractic Association announced recently.

That’s just one more obstacle you have to overcome to get people to read your online copy.

Is your website a pain in the ass?

Insomnia

Reading that email or blog post before bedtime can literally cause your readers to lose sleep.

At least, that’s what researchers from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital say.

The researchers observed folks reading an e-book on an iPad for four hours before bedtime. Then they watched the same participants read printed books before bedtime.

The results?

Reading from a screen before bedtime makes readers:

• Stay awake longer. Screen readers took 10 minutes longer to fall asleep than print readers. That’s because blue light from the screen reduces readers’ levels of melatonin, the hormone that regulates sleep and sleep cycles.
• Get sick. That reduction in melatonin may also increase readers’ risk of contracting breast and prostate cancer, diabetes, heart disease and obesity, studies show.
• Suffer body clock confusion. Their device’s blue light also messes with readers’ circadian rhythms. In other words, reading your blog post on an iPad at 10 p.m. can give your readers jet lag. (And my goal in life is to never write anything that makes my readers feel as if they’ve just stumbled off of a flight from Boston to Bhutan.)
• Enjoy less REM sleep. Known as the “dreaming” phase, this crucial stage of sleep is what lets our brains process memories, emotions and stress. Afraid your co-workers might go postal? Have you ever considered that your web copy might be the culprit?
• Stumble into work late and exhausted. Not exactly the purpose of our intranet, is it?

The Harvard/ Brigham and Women’s research supports previous studies, which also found that screen time before sleep can be detrimental. Several studies have associated lack of sleep with shortened life span.

Mushy thighs, obesity, heart disease and colon cancer

You might want to sit down for this. Or not.

Prolonged sitting shortens the average person’s life span by two years, according to a study by researchers at the American Cancer Society published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

“Sitting is the most underrated health threat of modern times,” writes Tom Rath, author of The New York Times bestseller Eat, Move, Sleep.

In other words, sitting is the new smoking.

Sitting for most of the day, according to a Washington Post piece, is linked to:

• Organ damage: heart disease, overproductive pancreas, colon cancer
• Muscle degeneration: mushy abs, tight hips, limp glutes
• Leg disorders: poor circulation, soft bones
• Back problems: inflexible spine, disc damage, strained neck, sore shoulders and back
• Foggy brain: Brain function slows when we are sedentary for a long time.

The Mayo Clinic adds to that list:

• Obesity and metabolic syndrome: high blood pressure, high blood sugar, a bigger waistline, abnormal cholesterol levels

We can just hope that our readers are reading our online messages on their iPhones while standing at the checkout counter at Whole Foods — and not on the lounge chair in front of the TV.

Not what we mean by ‘killer copy’

In this environment — where reading your message can be detrimental to your readers’ health — how can you get the word out online?

Make it easy on the reader. When it comes to online writing, get to the point faster, organize better, make it easier to read and make your web content more skimmable.

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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.

___

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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Web visitors spend 74% of their time on the first two screens, just 26% on all remaining screens, according to the Nielsen Norman Group

So don’t blow your top.

To reach mobile web visitors up top, communicate the gist of the message in the first four elements of the web page:

1. Headline

Tell the story, don’t tell about the story. “Hallmark doubles profit-sharing contribution,” for instance, not “Benefits changes announced.”

And don’t even get me started on label headlines: “Benefits changes” is not a headline.

Before:

Preventing and declaring conflicts of interest

This buries the topic behind 25 characters worth of –inging words. Plus, it’s unclear: Who’s preventing? Who’s declaring?

After:

Conflicts of interest: How do you handle?

This moves the topic to the top and clarifies who’s responsible.

2. Deck.

Deliver a secondary angle for news stories and a summary for benefits and feature stories. Don’t drop this essential element: 95% of web page visitors look at the deck.

Before: The writer dropped the deck, missing 25% of her chance to get the word out within the top four elements of the story.

After:

Conduct all your business ethically with our new policy

The new deck adds the benefit to the readers and introduces the new policy.

3. Lead

Show, don’t tell. Leads that illustrate the point with concrete material like stories bring the point to life for readers. And they draw 300% more readers and 520% more reading, according to a split test by Alex Turnbull and the Groove HQ.

Before:

I think I’d read 520% more of this if it were 15% more colorful.

After:

Just a light touch of detail makes this piece more engaging, puts the reader in the story and brings the message to life.

4. Nut graph

Put the story into a nutshell in the second paragraph. Don’t drop the deck: 95% of web page visitors read the deck, so it’s a key element for communicating to skimmers and other nonreaders in a hurry.

Before:

I’m sure this is all true, but it doesn’t define the story and move it forward. I’d consider this background rather than a nut graph.

After:

Here, we make the story snappier and get that policy link up among the first four elements.

Now test it.

Now email those first four elements to yourself and test them on your smartphone.

Can you get the gist of the story from the first four elements? If so, congratulations! You pass the 1-2-3-4 test.

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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.
____

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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Make mine to go.

More than half of your audience members now receive your emails, visit your web pages and engage with your social media channels via their mobile devices, not their laptops.

That makes it time for a mobile makeover. Here’s how Walter Doerschuk of Grabowski & Co. rewrote his message for the small screen at my most recent Write for Mobile Master Class:

Headline and deck

Focus on the front. In the original, the keyword — depression — doesn’t show up until 16 words in:

That makes it hard for Google (and humans!) to figure out what this story’s about.

In his after, Walter puts the keyword right where it belongs: at the front of the headline:

Intro

You can see the difference at a glance. The original spends 63 words establishing the background on depression before getting to the point: Here are some strategies for coping.

We all sometimes face day-to-day struggles. But sometimes, they turn serious.

Do any of these sound familiar to you?

• Loss of concentration or energy.
• Lack of motivation.
• Little or no sleep.
• Feeling worthless.

If so, you are not alone.

These are all symptoms of depression. It’s a global problem, affecting one out of every 10 people and costing employers $210.5 billion each year.

It’s your time to start 2018 off on the right foot.

In his rewrite, Walter draws readers in by focusing on their favorite subjects — themselves. Note that the list of symptoms is much more interesting when they’re my symptoms instead of just symptoms:

Then a couple of sentences of background information. I like the one in 10 stat more than the “costs employers billions” message. I’d use the latter when communicating to employers instead of individuals.

If so, you are not alone. Millions like you around the world face the same struggles. Depression affects one out of every 10 people, and it’s costing employers $44 billion each year.

And look how much higher the point of the piece — the coping strategies — are:

Body

The bold-faced lead-ins work well in Walter’s original body:

Look at that subhead! It grabs attention, lets people know where to look for the strategies, and even changes the way people look at your web page.

Also, check out that link. Links, being blue and underlined, are among the most visual words on a page. For scanners, it’s the difference between learning Find these new strategies to tackle depression and learning here. (However, I’d find a way to avoid repeating so closely the message in the subhead.)

Ask yourself: Which of those links are you more likely to click on? Find these new strategies to tackle depression? Or here?

I like numbering the tips, but I would put that number in the subheads, too.

Notice that the second list is 31 words shorter than the first.

Next steps

Skim the original section. You get “do” out of it:

For more resources, check here: University of Michigan Depression Tool Kit.

Skim the second. You get “How to get help: Talk, Consult, Call”:

How to get help
If you still struggle, there are more ways to find assistance.

• Talk with your co-workers, family and friends for advice or even just a listening ear.
• Consult with your company’s employee assistance program for additional resources.
• Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255) with an immediate crisis.

I’d bold-face a bit more:

• Talk with your co-workers, family and friends …
• Consult with your company’s employee assistance program … Call the National Suicide Prevention Line …

Notice that the second list is parallel and imperative, just like Aunt Ann (and other readers) want it to be.

I like the way Walter wrapped the resource into the body of the second piece.

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