5 Writing Information, Not Documents
In this chapter, we tackle three important issues:
Right information at the right time in the right amount.
All three issues relate to helping people get just what they need, when they need it, in the amount they need, as quickly as possible.
Breaking up large documents
Most people come to the web for information, not for a complete document. They don’t want the user manual; they want instructions for the task they are doing. They don’t want the handbook; they want the answer to specific questions. They want usable, manageable pieces.
What would you do if you were looking for information on obesity and you came across the web document in Figure 5-1? Would you print it out even though it does not tell you how many pages it will take to print it? Would you read it all online, scrolling or paging down many, many times? Or would you decide to go elsewhere for your information, hoping to find something that gave you more clues up front about what topics about obesity it covers?
To present content on the web in the amount that most people want:
Think “topic,” not “book’
Imagine that you’ve just bought a new cell phone. You open the box and see a stack of index cards in the box with the phone. Each card tells you how to do one task with the phone: set the time and date, choose the ring tone, put a number into memory, and so on.
How would you feel about getting this information on index cards? What would you do with the cards?
You might never open the plastic wrap around the stack of cards because then it would be hard to keep them together. You’d probably worry about losing them or about how messy they would be in your office, your kitchen, or your briefcase.
In the world of paper, a book is more comfortable than a stack of index cards. You know what to do with the book: you put it on an office shelf or in a kitchen drawer or in your briefcase. In the paper world, you need the book so all the pieces don’t get lost.
But when would you ever go to the book? Wouldn’t it most likely be to look up just one of the topics in the book? How much of the book would you want to look at? Wouldn’t it be just one topic?
Online, we don’t need the book. A better model for content on the web is a database with a good search engine and good navigation.
Figure 5-2 shows how Nokia has broken a user manual into a series of “index cards” on different tasks. Note how Nokia has also taken advantage of the interactivity possible on the web. Each task is not only a separate topic on a separate web page, it is also an animated demonstration. You can grab the information quickly by reading, or you can watch what to do by clicking each step in turn.
Break web content into topics and subtopics
Consider breaking up your web content by
Divide web content by time or sequence
Figure 5-3 Organizing information in a time sequence is often the logical way to break a large topic into useful pieces.
In many situations, time or sequence is a good way to organize information: something happens first, then something else, and so on. Figure 5-3, from Bank of America, shows a pathway page to a series of short articles on buying a home. Just scanning down the article titles (the links) gives prospective home buyers a sense of the tasks involved and the sequence they come in.
Divide web content by task
When you are putting task-based information on a web site, realize that, in almost all cases, a site visitor is looking for information on only one of what may be many tasks that your product lets users do.
Breaking up task-based information into a single web page for each task is the best way to help web users get just the content they need. Of course, you also need a good search engine and a good navigation structure to allow your site visitors to quickly find the right web page.
Figures 5-4 and 5-5, from the Canadian version of Intuit’s QuickBooks, show how some companies are breaking up their online manuals into a database of separate articles on different tasks. The first screen invites you to search by keywords, start down a navigation path, or choose one of the most frequently asked questions. When you get to the information pages, you get just the article on your specific need.
Divide web content by people
Another useful way to break up your web content is to consider who is going to use the information.
Separating information for different site visitors may work well at many levels within a site. The Nokia and Intuit examples earlier in this chapter ask people to self-identify by the product for which they want help. That’s typical of support and troubleshooting information on sites that support many products.
On some web sites, information for different people is totally separate and the site helps people self-identify right on the home page. Figure 5-6, from The Pension Service in the U. K., shows how one site helps its web users start down paths that are relevant to their different needs.
Breaking up information by user types works, however, only if people will be able to quickly and clearly self-identify into the right group. If they have to stop and think about which link to choose – or if they are likely to start down a wrong path – dividing the information by user type may be more frustrating than helpful.
Consider also whether some people will feel excluded if you divide information by user type. They may feel excluded if they do not see themselves in any of your user types. Even if they find a relevant user type, they may think you are excluding them from information they may want because that information is under a different user type.
Figure 5-6 Having separate sections for different user types (different personas) makes sense for some sites, but only if people will easily identify which user type to choose.
If people are likely to want information you have under different user types, make it clear and easy for them to move between different versions or different levels of related information. For example, Figure 5-7 shows how the U. S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) lets people move easily between articles written for the general public and articles on the same topic in more technical detail and more technical language aimed at health care professionals.
Figure 5-7 Separating information into general and technical articles may work well. If some site visitors want both, make it obvious how to move from one to the other.
The NCI folks learned in usability testing that patients and their families liked starting with the general information in lay language, but they also wanted access to the more technical information when they felt ready for it.
Divide web content by type of information
“How do I ...?” defines one big set of questions people come to web sites to ask. “How do I ...?” questions are about tasks or procedures. People want the information as step-by-step instructions.
“Can I ...?” “May I ...?” “Must I ...?” “Why should I ...?” and “What do I need to know about ...?” define another big set of questions. These questions are about rules, policies, concepts, and facts. People want the information as questions and answers or clear chunks of facts with good headings.
In many cases, you have both “can I” and “how to” information about the same topic. You have policies and procedures. Your site visitors may know the “can I” and need the “how to.” They may know the “how to” and need the “can I” for a specific situation. Answer the different types of questions on separate, linked pages or on separate sections of the same page.
For user manuals and other large documents, many technical writing groups are breaking up their information, using the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). For more on DITA, see http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-dita1.
Figures 5-8 and 5-9 show how the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, has separate, but linked, pages on facts about enrolling (entrance requirements) and the process of enrolling.
Figure 5-8 Information that answers the question “Am I eligible?” is separate from, and linked to, information on “How do I enroll?’
Divide web content by questions people ask
Caroline Jarrett suggests that too often FAQs (frequently asked questions) on web sites are really EAQs (easily answered questions).
Be sure that the questions you include are the ones that your site visitors come with – not just the ones you want to answer.
People come to web sites with questions, so using questions and answers may help people find what they need.
As you write questions, match the way that people would ask the question. You want to help them quickly recognize the question as the place to get the information they need. In fact, an advantage of using questions is that if users come with only a vague sense of what they want, they may recognize a question even if they had not thought of those specific words.
Writing good questions comes up again in more detail in Chapter 10 on headings.
Figure 5-10, from Briggs and Stratton, a company that sells engines and other machinery, shows how one company organizes its customer support by topic, product, and questions.
Deciding how much to put on one web page
We’ve been looking at how to break your web content into pieces – by time or sequence, by task, by people, by type of information, and by the different questions that people ask. Once you have the pieces, you have to decide how many topics, articles, questions, or pieces of information to put together on one web page.
One page or separate pages? When faced with that decision, ask yourself these questions:
How much do people want in one visit? How connected is the information?
I see many web pages where topics are stacked together on one web page when they are answers to different questions that different people ask at different times. The topics fit together from the organization’s point of view, but the web user wants only one when visiting the site.
For example, you can see in Figure 5-11 that Dymocks, an Australian bookseller, has all of its customer service information in one file – one long web page. Whether you are looking for the company’s privacy policy, how to use its shopping basket, or whether you can return an item, you go to the same page. I’ve been in the Dymocks store in Sydney many times; it’s a wonderful bookshop. But this part of the web site doesn’t match most web users’ needs.
A page like this is built for the scenario, “Mario wants to read all of our customer support policies and procedures at one time.” That scenario doesn’t seem likely. It’s much more likely that site visitors will start conversations like the following with the site.
Figure 5-11 Very few, if any, site visitors want all of this long page. The topics go together only from the company’s point of view, not from the web user’s.
These site visitors each want only the answer to the one question they are asking. They don’t want to have to wade through other information to get to what they want.
From the web user’s point of view, a more useful design would be a pathway page with topics each leading to a much shorter page that covers just that topic – the way it is done by Powell’s of Portland, Oregon (Figure 5-12).
Am I overloading my site visitors? How long is the web page?
We’ve just seen when you should break up web pages that cover many different topics. A web page on one topic can also be too long. Consider again the example at the beginning of this chapter: the 32-page document on Weight Control and Diet. That’s just too much for any person to absorb at once.
Most people today do scroll vertically if the page layout indicates that the page continues. But they won’t scroll forever. Think of three or four scrolls’ worth as a maximum length for a web page.
To break up longer pages, use the guidelines earlier in this chapter to find a good way to group and divide the information into subtopics. That way, you can make a series of pages with a table of contents on a previous (pathway) page.
What’s the download time?
A third consideration in deciding between putting information together on one web page or separating it onto separate web pages is how long it will take for your site visitors to get what they need. Remember that many people still have slow connections and pay by the minute.
People are going to be annoyed if they wait a long time for a page that has much more than they need. On the other hand, if you break up the information onto many small pages and your visitors want all those pages, waiting for each one to load may be annoying. And the time between pages may interrupt their putting the information together in their heads.
So you have to think about the issue of download time together with the issues of how much of the information people want and how connected it is in their minds.
Will people want to print? How much will they want to print?
And the fourth question to think about in deciding between one page or separate pages is what people might want to print.
Make sure that your pages print well.
Always include a way for people to print the content without losing the end of each line of text.
So you have to consider how much people want in any particular visit to your web site.
If you have some people who want to print only a little, some who want to print more, and some who want to print an entire document, offer options. Figure 5-13 shows how the U. S. National Cancer Institute makes some of its content available.
PDF – yes or no?
You probably already know this, but just in case ... PDF stands for portable document format. PDF was invented by Adobe Systems, Inc. (www.adobe.com), as a way to publish documents that anyone can read, regardless of whether they are working in the same operating system or using the same software that the document’s creator worked in.
A PDF file keeps the layout, page breaks, and fonts of the original document. With PDF, you can have a document that looks the same whether you send a paper copy to someone or that person prints it from the web.
Anyone who has Adobe Acrobat Reader on a computer can open, read, and print the document. Most new computers today come with Acrobat Reader already installed, and Adobe allows free downloads of Acrobat Reader from its web site. Anyone who is comfortable downloading and installing software can have a copy.
Should you rely on PDF files for your web content?
I’m not going to say, “Never put up a PDF file.” As always, it comes down to your goals, your audiences, and their scenarios.
However, realize that, with most PDF files, you are providing a paper document on the web rather than web-based information. If the document looks like a paper document or if it is large, people are likely to print it rather than read it on the screen. You have distributed the document; you have saved the printing and shipping cost; you have shifted the cost and effort of printing to your audiences – but have you really met their needs?
When might a PDF file be appropriate?
If you are using the web to distribute journal articles or other material that you expect people to print and use on paper, and if your audiences are comfortable with PDF files, PDF may be the right way to go.
The web is a great distribution mechanism:
Distribution is the great advantage that the Internet has over paper, even for paper documents.
When is a PDF file not appropriate?
However, PDF documents are often not the best way to create a useful and usable web site. Break documents into non-PDF pieces –
When people don’t want the whole document
If people come to your web site for information – not for documents as a whole, but for only some of the information in those documents – a PDF file defeats the very purpose and nature of the web.
Yes, PDF files are searchable. But people don’t want to first navigate or search to get the document and then search again within the document. They want to navigate or search directly to the specific information that they want. And many people don’t know how to search in a PDF document.
And yes, you can divide up a PDF document and give it a linked table of contents so that people who know how to open the index list can jump to a specific place in the document – but only if you have set it up well. Most PDF files are just put up on the web, with no attention to internal links.
A story: I was getting information from the web site of a government agency when I reached a point where I needed the physical address of one of the agency’s regional offices. A link on the page said it would take me to a list of the regional offices. What would you have expected to happen by clicking that link? I expected a single page with a list of offices. To my surprise, Acrobat started to open. I waited, as one must, and a document opened that had nothing at all to do with regional offices. It was a report on something totally different from the topic I was getting information about. My first thought was “wrong link,” but curiosity led me to at least look quickly through the document. Sure enough, an appendix 20 pages later was the list of regional offices I needed.
That’s not a good use of PDF. If the link promises a list of offices, take the page out of the paper document and make it a separate (not PDF) web page.
When people want to read from the screen
Why make the document look just like paper if it is not meant to be used on paper?
For example, a two-column layout works very well on paper. It doesn’t work well on the web if you can’t see the entire page without scrolling. On the screen, people have to scroll down while reading only halfway across the screen and then scroll up again to read the second column.
A document like the U. S. Department of Agriculture Issue Brief in Figure 5-14 just begs to be printed and read off-line.
When your audiences are not comfortable with PDF files or with downloading software
If you have a public audience, don’t assume that a PDF file is acceptable. Not everyone has Acrobat Reader. Not everyone is willing or able to download and install software even if it is free.
In usability testing that I did in 2004 on information about cancer, more than half of the public participants – cancer patients and their family members – were unwilling to select the PDF option. They said they saw the PDF symbol all the time, but they didn’t know what it was and never chose it. They had never downloaded programs onto their computers, and they were leery of doing so.
Even people who have computers that come with Acrobat Reader may be uncomfortable going to PDF files. For people with dial-up access or slow machines, a PDF file may take a long time to open.
PDF files often open in a second window, and second windows cause problems for many people. They want to back out of the file that came up, but Back isn’t available – and they don’t realize that they now have two browser windows open.
When accessibility is an issue
For many years, PDF files did not work well for people who use assistive software, such as screen-readers. That has changed. Adobe Acrobat 8.0 supports tagging so that accessibility software can read a PDF file. But ...
Three more reasons for not using PDFs
PDFs are not the best way to provide information on your web site for at least three more reasons:
PDF files are optimized for the printed page
A typical PDF page is in portrait orientation. Most web users are looking at landscape-oriented screens.
Acrobat Reader works differently from browsers
Users have to learn yet another way of navigating, another way of printing, another way of searching.
As a web content specialist or a web developer, you may be comfortable going back and forth among different browsers, even though that means changing where and what you click on. Are the people you are writing to all equally comfortable doing that?
PDF files are usually paper documents – not written in web style
If the author was in “paper mode” – in “document mode” or “book mode” – when writing what becomes the PDF file, it’s very likely that the writing isn’t going to work well on the web. The paragraphs will be too long. The headings will be too sparse. The author will have probably assumed that people coming to the document will read it from first page to last.
In some cases, offer both versions
If some site visitors want information on the screen and others want entire documents, offer both. Many sites do.
When you link to a PDF, tell people that’s what they are getting and how large it is or how long it will take to download.
Figure 5-15 shows you how employees at the U. S. Federal Aviation Administration can choose to download a PDF of their entire web content standards or get an HTML page on specific topics in the standards.
Figure 5-15 This intranet site offers the whole document as a PDF and also offers each topic as a separate web page.
SUMMARIZING CHAPTER 5
Here are key messages from Chapter 5: