Josh's Weblog: The Long and Short of It (Jakob Nielsen on Article Length)

The Long and Short of It (Jakob Nielsen on Article Length)

Jakob Nielsen has done some interesting research and modeling on how users read websites in his latest article, “Long vs. Short Articles as Content Strategy.” The hypothesis is that a mix of long and short content on a website is more interesting to a reader than articles of all the same size, long or short.

But the very best content strategy is one that mirrors the users' mixed diet. There's no reason to limit yourself to only one content type. It's possible to have short overviews for the majority of users and to supplement them with in-depth coverage and white papers for those few users who need to know more.

I wonder how this may relate to the latest trend of microblogging such as the twitter feed I have put in my profile box on the right. Now all the items I might consider that were one-liners I put there and I save longer issues for blog entries. Upshot is that I send out updates a little more often but full blog posts are likely to come more slowly.

Josh Poulson

Posted Thursday, Nov 15 2007 06:36 AM