Week 12i: Writing for different audiences

We have mentioned how a good webpage, or for that matter, any good writing, needs to take its audience into consideration.

We will now look at how web writing can better meet the needs of its audience, especially a global one.

Writing for a Global Audience

Given that the World Wide Web has a global reach, expect your readers to be an international one. Hence, you will also need to write in such a way that your global audience is able to understand your texts easily.


Tips on writing for a global audience:
Use familiar and common words that come to users’ minds easily when they are creating search queries. These are often old words that users have been using.

You need to speak the user's language, which means using keywords that match users' search queries, and choose the most common terms.


Jobs, Openings, Positions - which would you choose?
Jobs is a commonly used term known to all when dealing with work opportunities.

Note that on the Internet, words are often de-contextualised, so when users key in Openings and Positions, they may not necessarily be expecting your site on job openings!


Lecturer, tutor, educator, teacher – which would you choose?


It may be tempting to coin new terms because it could display your sense of humour or creativity, and you could also lay claim to the term if it becomes popular.


But, more likely, users will still use their old words. A key usability guideline is to avoid made-up words in navigation menus, because users scan them for words they know. In full-text content, you could include some new words for effect, but do supplement them with old words that your users use.

Use precise terms, and avoid "politically correct" words. For example, use blind users or low-vision users, and not visually challenged users. People do not search for a made-up phrase like visually challenged. Also, blind and low-vision are more precise as they refer to two different groups of people.


Cut down on marketing language. Some marketing sites like to make their products seem more exciting than they are. For example, instead of calling a spade a spade, they call it a digging implement, or worse, an excavation solution! But doing this will lose them customers as users will type in the known word, ie spade. Users will look for cheap airline tickets, not value-priced travel experience.

Provide generic names with brand names. If yours is a popular brand known to users all over the world, then users will often use the brand name in their searches. However, if your brand name is still not well-known, you would want to include a generic name together with your brand name when describing your products or services so that users can find you. For example, include Air-con servicing and not just Kooltech.

Avoid metaphors and slang terms as an international audience will probably not be familiar with metaphors or slang terms known locally. For example, terms like Fried Rice Paradise and The Durians (Esplanade) need some accompanying brief explanations.

Avoid puns and play on words as they may cause confusion for those whose first language is not English.


For more details, do read Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, August 28, 2006.


Writing Online for Teenagers
(Adapted from Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, January 31, 2005)


Teenagers tend to be bored more easily than adults when using websites. They prefer simple websites (but not childish ones) that offer interactive features.


In a study done by Nielsen, it was found that teens use the Internet for:
Homework and assignments
Hobbies or other special interests
Entertainment (eg music and games)
News
Learning about health issues that they're too embarrassed to talk about
E-commerce


Also, it was found that:

Contrary to the idea that teens enjoy surfing websites, especially those with glitzy, blinking graphics, teens’ insufficient reading skills, less sophisticated research strategies, and a lower patience level led them to be less effective when reading online.

While they pay more attention to a website's visual appearance than adult users, they preferred sites with a relatively modest, clean design. They found overly glitzy websites too difficult to use.

Teenagers don't like to read a lot on the Web. Sites that were easy to scan or that illustrated concepts visually were strongly preferred to sites with dense text.

One surprising finding: teenagers don't like tiny font sizes any more than adults do.

Teens like to do things online, and don’t like sites that are slow. They are impatient and don’t like sites that need a lot of figuring out.



The following interactive features are preferred as they let teens do things than simply sit and read. These interactive features allow teenagers to make their mark on the Internet and express themselves in various ways.
Online quizzes
Forms for providing feedback or asking questions
Online voting
Games
Features for sharing pictures or stories
Message boards
Forums for offering and receiving advice
Features for creating a website or otherwise adding content

There are many different preferences between age groups. To have a successful website, you need to consider the needs and preferences of your target groups.



Teens have different needs from adults and young children. Besides the interaction design of the site, you will also need to consider other things such as choice of topics and content style.


Writing for the Elderly
(adapted from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/seniors.html)

More and more of the greying population are going online for various purposes.
In the United States alone, there is an estimated 9 million Internet users over the age of 65. The number of elderly folks going online in Singapore is also increasing, with many showing keen interest in modern technologies such as the Internet, which provides them with another channel of communication and information.


In a study done by Nielsen, email was the main Internet application used by seniors, and they use the Web mainly for:
Research
News
Tracking investments
Researching medication and medical conditions
Online shopping and banking (people over 55 are believed to spend more on online goods and services than any other age group)

It was found that seniors fared worse in usability tests than those in the younger age group. Why?

Websites tend to be produced by young designers, who often assume that all users have perfect vision and motor control, and know everything about the Web. Also, as many of the elderly had little experience with computers when they were working, they were not familiar with how the technologies worked, which made things more complicated for them.


Poor design of websites will make the Web more than twice as hard for seniors to use. Seniors strongly prefer those websites that are easiest for them to use. By focusing on improving usability for seniors, you can attract them to your website again and forming a long-term relationship with them.


Activity:
Discuss: How can websites be made more user-friendly for the elderly?


Tips for designing websites for seniors:

Support larger font sizes. Sites that target seniors should use at least 12-point type as the default. All sites, whether or not they target seniors specifically, should let users increase text size as desired. It was also the case that the elderly participants preferred 800x600 over 1024x768 resolution.


Use large text for hypertext links to ensure readability, and make them more prominent targets for clicking.


Avoid tightly clustered links that are not separated by white space. This will decrease erroneous clicks and increase the speed at which users hit the correct link. Command buttons and other interaction objects should also be reasonably large to be easy to click.


Use different colours, and use the colours consistently to clearly distinguish between visited and unvisited links, as seniors may lose track of where they have been.

Communicate that a page is not finished and requires scrolling, as elderly participants regularly failed to scroll down a page and hence often missed out on information. This could be due to the fact that the elderly users had not fully internalised the concept of browser-windows often requiring scrolling.


Pull-down menus, and other moving interface elements cause problems for seniors who may not be steady when using the mouse. Use static user interface designs that do not require pixel-perfect pointing.

Whoever your audience may be, you need to make your website user-friendly. Web users are impatient and will simply take their business elsewhere, if they find your site too slow or unfriendly.


Some general tips on making your website accessible:
§ Make fonts resizeable
§ Provide language choices
§ Have captions for audio and video clips
§ Provide strong contrast between fonts and background
§ Avoid having flickering or strobing light effects (may induce epilepsy in some people)
§ Provide various ways to navigate your site
§ Provide screen reader technology such as allowing the text to be converted to speech


(Digital Life, The Straits Times, 24 July 2007)