More efficient information brief discussion on website copy design

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Some time ago in Beijing Interactive experience Day, listened to the Sina product manager Li Yuming "More efficiency information", lamented Sina to the media and the information dissemination research profound, grasped a lot of minute single straight to arrive the Netizen heart point. He believes that the rapid development of micro-blogging and become the Internet information dissemination can not be neglected platform, its key advantage is efficiency. Therefore, Sina Weibo's design is also based on this as the center to implement and promote.

His presentation is based on the four key points of the microblogging information design (information acquisition, self-information expression, information dissemination and information communication). Alipay as a tool-oriented web site, I focus on the content of information acquisition: how can we effectively convey information to users, user-friendly understanding and use of our Alipay products? He has a few very good points, for example: To minimize the user's bounce rate, to ensure fluent reading; Make valuable things easier to absorb.

Classification

Copywriting is an important means of conveying information. Graphic thinking popular modern, text information is still an important part of the site.

People in the Internet age have hated reading large paragraphs of text, and web browsing is also pretty fast. How to pin the target users to communicate effective information quickly does not create understanding barriers, is the focus of copywriting design.

The author thinks that the copy about the website can be divided into operation copy, product copy, Operation copy.

1, the operation of the copy is the product promotion and promotional activities mainly copy. This kind of copywriting needs to have the fast dissemination value and the innovation value, the concise eye-catching, seeks to be able to instantly attract the user eyeball, stimulates the click Desire.

Figure 1

2, product copy is mainly the product function introduction, use way, help information, agreement, also includes the website navigation, the page title and so on, is one of the website interface main body, pursues the rigorous, the simplification and the logic. The following image is for Google's product navigation and introduction.

Figure 2

3, the operation of the copy refers to the user operations related to the copy. Includes control label, action hint, error, status, operation result, etc. The following is an error copy of Figure 3.

Figure 3

The three are not clearly distinguishable and often appear simultaneously on the same page. Sometimes a copy can also carry multiple functions, such as Figure 2 on the Google product introduction to the copy, both the product copy can also be counted as operating copy.

Principles

Based on the understanding of the use of these copywriting, summed up the basic principles of copywriting design are the following:

1. Accurate. It is the basic requirement of the copywriting design to accurately request the text to be clear and unambiguous, so as to be able to convey information and exchange ideas correctly. We pay treasure set up payment method is actually let the user to bind fast payment, but the copywriting only said is "recommend the most suitable payment method". The purpose is to attract users to open fast payment, but in the text of vague concepts, users are difficult to understand.



Figure 4

2. Easy to understand. An important indicator of it is readability. Readability describes the understandable extent of the text based on complex sentences and difficult words, and it is about the difficulty of the language itself, not its appearance. Readability metrics can often be divided into levels of availability, determined by some people who easily understand the age and level of reading an article. The traditional language reading research has many mature measure formula and the grade index, believed also may transplant to the Internet product text information research. Factors that affect readability include the length of the words and the frequency with which they are not used. From the reader's point of view, the factors that affect readability include: background knowledge, reading skills, interest, motivation.

In traditional written text studies, readability needs to be distinguished from legibility. Legibility describes the ease and comfort of typographical text reading. It has nothing to do with language content, but it is closely related to the size and appearance of print or text display. For the internet, readability is related to font style, color, line spacing, size, position, etc.

3. Simple. Simplicity is the important direction of efficiency conveying information, and it is the core requirement of Internet product copy. Simplicity is to cut down on words and simplify sentences. Streamlining copy helps to highlight important content while avoiding full screen text, so users can be more confident to read. The main means of deletion are:

Cut meaningless introductory text, such as some tools in the top of the Web site after login into the "Dear XXX users, welcome to XXX", in fact, only retain the user name this key information can;

Remove unnecessary instructions;

Remove tedious explanations using descriptive links;

Use less prepositions (for/under/for/on/about). These words weaken the predicate of the sentence, so try to omit it;

Do not use passive;

Erase the uninteresting beginning.

Tenpay's present page (Figure 5) is very concise and retains only the necessary copy.

Figure 5

Of course, also want to avoid too much deletion, the user should be able to control the results, the popular saying is to delete too many users will not understand what you want to express.

4. Unification. The tone style of the website copy, use Word, grammar to maintain uniform rule.

Facilitate the user to establish the overall understanding of the site;

Reduce the cost of learning;

Better managed.

5. Timely appearance.

Copy to appear in the right place, boldly hide the need to hide the copy;

Help to low-key, avoid interfering with users;

Timely appearance, timely disappearance.

For example, figure 6 Taobao registration process to fill in the form of help only when the cursor activates the input box will appear, rather than when the page is opened directly display. That is to ensure that the page clean and tidy and retain the necessary help to the user.

Figure 6

6. Outline display. We do not need to present all the features in an interface, and we do not need to convey all the information in an interface.

There are two main ways of grading: progressive and phased.

Progressive is different for the user, the more complex information in advance to hide, advanced users want to see is again in some way to show out. As shown in Figure 7 is the introduction of Sina micro-currency, detailed description of the form of the text chain to hide, you need to see users can click to view.

Figure 7

A stage is a process that distinguishes the display from the content. Typical is the Operation Wizard, which displays different help information at different stages.

7. Emotional. Whether the Internet product copy needs to be emotional, various websites have different styles, the point is uncertain whether there is generality, but the tone of politeness is the basic attitude. Emotional copywriting has the following advantages:

Give users a sense of achievement. Especially for novice users this is very important, the appropriate task to give some praise, so that users have more confidence to use.

Easy to encourage users. This is beneficial to attract users, increase user's patience, reduce the frustration of user operation failure.

Conducive to timely marketing. Appropriate for the product publicity, increase user awareness of the product and the degree of goodwill.

For the sake of the user, to the user with intimacy.

For example, online login is full of various check code to prevent malicious attacks, but also to the user landing caused a certain inconvenience. Figure 8 is a copy of Twitter's input to the checkout code, and interesting hints can obviously reduce your resistance to the checksum.

Figure 8

Test

The design tradeoff of copywriting is mainly to avoid the information conveyed by the website and the user's actual understanding of the deviation or to attract the attention of the users, the basic requirement is the information dissemination of efficiency. But the copy design often can't do a lot of user research test, because the copy is only a part of the website, also is not a product good or bad primary factor, it is difficult to separate out to do a lot of testing. How to write good copy, on the one hand, rely on the performer's personal language skills, understanding of product flow and innovation, on the other hand, can also through simple user testing to avoid some unnecessary mistakes, to ensure the quality of basic copy. We can invite people around to use the product or read the copy. It is helpful for us to analyze whether the copy is accurate to convey the meaning, is advantageous to observe the copy to the product to have the promotion or the hindrance function, is advantageous to discovers the blind spot, the introduction better plan, moreover the cost is very small. Do copy design Most taboo is self-willed, hasty and for, lied.

I hope this article can let designers begin to pay attention to the copy design, and from the overall global direction of the product to consider each page needs to be placed in the copy, there is a mistake or omission of the place also please correct me.

Reference documents:

Li Yuming's ppt-"More efficient Information"

Xiao-Text Design considerations

Giles colborne-"Simplicity first-interactive design four Strategies"

        Original: http://ped.alipay.com/archives/862.html