Non-profit literary society website

RASP: Bringing order out of chaos

The Redmond Association of Spokenword (RASP) is a literary non-profit group which gathers poets, writers, and spoken word performers in a supportive environment in and around Redmond, Washington (near Seattle).

	See the RASP website for details

Though RASP has a website, it had not been updated since 2001 (this is written in 2005) and many of the features and links were decayed and obsolete. I was recruited to serve as webmaster and redevelop the site—and as the board had an opening, became a board member

Setting the stage

Another board member had strong ideas about the interface (design) but hadn't had time to work them out graphically. She expressed concern about putting too much effort into bringing the existing site up-to-date and then abandoning that effort when she finished her conceptualization.

I concurred with her intent but not her concern. My first step was to embark on an education process with the all-volunteer board of directors. I promised answers for their concerns, including those brought forward in the following email:

The president suggested, and it is a sound suggestion though not a fun one, that the content of the website is more important right now than the design. I need to know how much text can reasonably fit on a page[1], how possible it is to put links in text that go to other pages[2], what the research is on what people respond positively to[3], and what they just "don't bite, so don't bother to put it in"[4] -- that sort of thing.

I gave them answers. Before I knew it, the answers turned into lectures, mini-lessons on Internet usage and standards, the reading legacy of western movable type, and good web design. About the four points in that email, I said:

Length
People won't scroll sideways at all, but I've never met anyone who refused to scroll down as far as needed. That said, the experts agree optimal length is no more than three screens deep. The guideline is—be reasonable. After you write in Microsoft Word, use Save As Web Page. Then open that with your browser set to 800 x 600. That will give you a rough idea how long your content is, without menus, headers, and navigation.

Links
Links are the beauty of the World Wide Web—in fact they are the definition of hyperlink. Using the simplest of HTML tags, anyone can insert links to any other page or web site in the world. You can even do that in Word, it's at the bottom of the Insert menu. Again, keep to a reasonable number. I once read … well, tried to read … a web page that had every word hyperlinked. Finally gave up. It was miserable. It might have been the most necessary information to save my life, but I couldn't force my way to the end.

At that time, one of the board members had four links in his 145 word biographical sketch, which visually pushed the limit. Because the Internet IS a visual medium—for all its reliance on words—the rule of thumb is to keep down the noise, clutter, distraction factor. Links, as necessary as they are to make the web work, are a distraction.

Also, a link should be recognizable as a link. The standard is blue underlined and a designer has to work hard to deviate from the standard. I saw, and immediately departed from, a page that had links but they were the same color as the other text. I only knew they were links when my mouse cursor turned momentarily into the little hand--bad choice on that designer's part.

Response
The old adage about separate thoughts confined to discreet paragraphs is out. No matter what your 11th-grade composition teacher insistd, those kind of paragraphs are often too long to read onscreen. Instead, stick to the tried and trusted Associated Press style of 25-30 words (one or two sentences) to each paragraph—no more than four lines per paragraph at 800 x 600.

Research using mirrors and video cameras has shown that long paragraphs cause the eye muscles to become fatigued. In English, we read from left margin to right margin and then the eye must jump back to the left margin again without interruption. If the paragraph is too long, the eye loses its sense of direction, interrupts itself, and gets tired. And that causes an immediate loss of comprehension.

Connect thoughts in multiple paragraphs and set multi-paragraph thoughts apart with subheads, as I've done on this page. Use bullets and numbered lists whenever possible to give reader's eyes a break.

Inclusion
As long as web designers stick reasonably close to the standards, people will read just about anything. How many people do you know who read cereal boxes when there's nothing else available? Use your own judgment as your guide. If you wouldn't read it on someone else's web site, no matter how important it might be, shorten it. If it can't be shortened, leave it out. (Believe it or not, the publishers of cereal boxes do extensive usability research before starting the design phase.)

It's easy to find Internet "horror" stories. Take a few minutes to surf the Internet … for example, go to Dice.com and read a couple dozen job descriptions to see what fatigues you and what jumps out at you. Few were given any thought about readability. The more of them you read, the more tired your eyes will get and the less likely it is that you'll want to read the longer chunks of text.

Guttenburg's legacy

My mini lecture turned to the distilled essence of 500+ years of readability research (see my presentation on readability techniques and "gotchas.") In just 10 years of intensive Internet promotion, we've completely reversed the centuries-long paradigm that every first, second, and third grader learns by heart.

When we read print documents, books, newspapers, magazines—we read letter groups, not single characters. The training is so strong that you can cover up the bottom of a line of text and most people will still be able to sound it out from the visible word shapes. Yet on the internet (and to a lesser extent in PowerPoint), we bandy characters about as if they had no other context. One of the most overused PowerPoint animations drops letters one at a time from the sky … absolutely unreadable until the words are assembled and stop moving.

We use graphics with words in them when we can't force the internet to guarantee the typefaces we want. And even there, we've given up hope. When I studied photography, I was taught to WANT a huge image with massive amounts of visual data. On the web, that just equates to long, slow page refreshes and lost audiences whose patience gave out. Quick graphics with jagged, almost unreadable edges, are the norm. Put words in graphic format ... what in the world are we doing to ourselves?

Content is key

Site Pro News posted an article by Elizabeth McGee about site design that articulated my exact philosophy (emphasis is mine):

A huge mistake I see many website owners make is that they get caught up in making their site cute. They love the little animations, buttons and dramatic backgrounds. What they fail to consider is that these things are worthless if you don't offer good content, easy navigation and a logical flow.

First of all don't try to be everything to everyone. Design your site around a theme, preferably a niche theme. Don't confuse your readers with links all over the page. Design a logical flow. Lead your viewers to where you would like them to go. Leave plenty of white space and keep your pages organized. Clearly state at the top of your pages what you are about and what you would like your viewers to do.

So I told the RASP board:
We need to modify the existing website now, take out the old-fashioned drawings (Sir John Tenniel's illustrations from the original Alice in Wonderland, a kind of subliminal reference to literature), repair the navigation, fix the broken tables, and align the heads and text so they don't lurch from page to page. Once the site is functional again, we can change the design later.

It won't bother our readers/visitors/members to see the site change, when we have time for the fun stuff. As David Talbot said (see my presentation on audience definition) "The web is plastic. If you make a mistake, you can fix it and a week later, it won't matter at all." We can even do our modernizations a little at a time. There are websites that have made a game out of their transformations, teasing their regular readers to discover what's new and report in.

Up and running well

Applying those thoughts, I opened the revised RASP site for public scrutiny. The changes were made with no disruption—and no complaints. Though the interface redesign is still in the future, the site is now flexible enough that even such a major change can be made with minimal impact and no breakage. My "final statement" to the board was:

The existing site can now be updated (and fairly quickly) to whatever new interface you want to develop -- navigation down the left or right, global graphic and page headline at the top, and revisions to the copy on the right (or left as per the menu choice). I don't think we'll need to reinvent the site from scratch.

Postscript

A year ago, we were mandated with a change of location for our monthly reading series. As painful as it was letting go of the place we'd called home for the past eight years, it presented NO problem at all revising the website. I used the opportunity to make several other changes based on adjustments to the board membership and corrected some factual issues pre-dating my board term about which I had been unaware.

The membership proved they read the website, because I created a pop-up coupon for a free soup-and-bread promotion sponsored by our new hosts. The response from long-time poets, some of whom had not attended in years, was positive. Our first reading in the new location was well-attended.

Bibliography
McGee. E. (2005). Design Your Site for Traffic in 2005. Winnipeg, MB: Jayde Online, Inc. dba Site Pro News.

[1] Length
[2] Links
[3] Response
[4] Inclusion