Before starting the information design of a business Web site it is important to consider the way a user is most likely to use it. The first instinct of a business owner or sales and marketing professional is to construct a compelling argument to convince the user to buy the product or service. This can be several paragraphs of prose. 

The typical web user is going to see 5 or 6 paragraphs of block text and think "I'm not going to read all that." It's a big time commitment in web terms. So they will read the first paragraph and think "that's just what I'm looking for." They may scan the headings for other chunks of information they seek. Then they will look at navigation or at other areas that are visually set off from the main text.

Web users visit business websites for a reason. If they want to purchase something, they will usually be looking for a specific product. Subconsciously they will be taking in the clues that will tell them whether or not they trust the business behind the website. If the web user is looking for a service, they will be looking for a concise description of services offered, pricing, credentials and contact information.

The secret to creating a user-friendly information design is figuring out what the user wants to do, and making that as easy as possible. To do this you should chunk the information into "bite size" pieces and arrange them so that the user will naturally follow them to your goal, be that a contact form submission, phone call or "complete transaction" button.  That's not to say you shouldn't have depth of information on your site, but in the design you want to create that obvious scanning path to the call to action, and make sure any critical information is included in that path.

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Sushi     | 213.156.111.xxx | 2009-04-20 09:13:26 User-friendly articles are usualy in form of lists. Those are the easiest to quickly skim through and choose only relevant points to read. I hate those "walls of text". Reply | Quote 1   0

Troy - Articles vs Business Websites     | 99.50.124.xxx | 2009-04-20 18:12:44 I'd consider an article a piece of deep content, and I think a user is more likely to read block text. You are right in that making a kind of list, by using paragraph headings and bold on key terms will make it easier for the user to scan. This is important because many users will do an initial scan in the browser to see if the article is worth bookmarking, or printing out for offline reading. Reply | Quote 0   0

Stancja - jim.stancje@gmail.com     | 213.156.111.xxx | 2009-04-23 09:00:09 When you have fans - sure, they'll read everything. But your everage joe stumbles upon so much content every day that it's just easier to quickly scan through lists and read only interestin stuff then to read only half of the articles he wanted to. Reply | Quote 0   0

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