Design State: A weblog about government web design

If you want to know how folks read webpages, Jakob Nielsen will tell you right away: They don’t. The average user skims and scans the pages they visit in order to determine whether the page content is relevant to their interests. The point: cut to the chase. No one wants to read mission statements, statements from the director, or anything that doesn’t help direct them to the content they are looking for.

If you’re in Washington DC the week of April 5th – 10th, you can take Jakob Nielsen’s class on writing for the web.

They’ll also be in London, San Francisco and Sydney this year, but if you can’t make it to any of these conferences, you can always read through the section on his website devoted to Writing for the Web.

I tried to make this post short, so you wouldn’t skim it. Did you?