Design matters, on the Web and off

I know this is getting to be old news, but according to Nature magazine, Web users judge sites in just 50 milliseconds. Having read the book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell, I completely agree with the effect, if not necessarily with all of Gladwell's causes. I particularly liked the analysis of what users are looking for on Web sites at the end of the article.

These days, enlightened web users want to see a "puritan" approach, Caudron adds. It's about getting information across in the quickest, simplest way possible. For this reason, many commercial websites now follow a fairly regular set of rules. For example, westerners tend to look at the top-left corner of a page first, so that's where the company logo should go. And most users also expect to see a search function in the top right.

I would take it even one step further. Web users want not only clean graphical design, but also clean, easy-to-understand writing as well. If you haven't run a Flesch or FOG readability analysis on your Web site (such as this one available at Juicy Studio), you should. After all, you want your readers to be compelled by your message, not your knowledge of complex sentence structure.

The bottom line: good design and clear language isn't just good practice. It appeals to how our brains are wired. And simpler really is better.

For those of you keeping score at home, this posting has a Flesch score of 64 and a FOG reading index of 9. It is about the reading level of Reader's Digest and suitable for reading by someone in sixth grade, which is just about right to communicate a quick idea.

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