How Users Read on the Web

While reading RSS feeds of several blogs, a wish came in to mind to make use of a web page reader software, which reads the content in the website. Probabily, a firefox extension for it. I googled “read web page content” and found one interesting web page as top result. It was Jakob Nielsen‘s Alertbox for October 1, 1997.

He says that 79 % of users he tested on this topic, reads the web page in a scanning method. Only 16% of users read the page as word by word.

While reading his article with examples, I’ve found some good ideas which I should impliment while posting a blog.

1. Better to list points as bullets than writing as a paragraph.
2. Minimize the content. Include more meaning.
3. People care who is the Author.
4. Use simple but standard language.
5. Understand that web users are busy.
6. This article could be readable ( Am I right ? 🙂 )

In the same article, he puts a link to a link to detailds about eyetracking studies.

Though the article was writen in 1997, the facts are still true. Or did he wrote this for future that time ?