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I like the pictures

I'm not previously familiar with Alertbox, the "bi-weekly column by Dr. Jakob Nielsen, principal, Nielsen Norman Group", but it has an ironcially spartan design considering the fact that it implores us to "read these first: Usability 101 and Top 10 mistakes of Web design."

What really caught my eye was this tidbit:

On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.

On the one hand, yeah, of course we scan websites. Websites are full of all kinds of crap that does not pertain to us, including sidebars, headers, ads, and other boring crap. And many visitors are just here for the pictures. (This is so completely the case for AtlasBlogged... I check sitemeter!)

On the other hand, this means that most text goes unread, and it might as well not be there. And while I do have that reaction for most of the blogs I read, I don't want you to have that reaction while reading what I've written.

Dammit, the 80% you wouldn't want to read is the stuff I edited out anyway!

Nielsen's graphs are instructive... as he explains, the first one demonstrates that "when you add verbiage to a page, you can assume that customers will read 18% of it."

Customers? Hrm. We might speak of a marketplace of ideas, but a political blog is not designed the same way as a commercial site. Nielsen's second graph shows that "on an average visit, users read half the information only on those pages with 111 words or less." While that's interesting, it's probably way too broad to be useful to me or the average political blogger. Still, it's an interesting site and I'll have to find time to read more of it.

Though I'd appreciate a pretty picture in any post that doesn't include useful graphs.