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Decks — those one-sentence summaries under the headline — do the heavy lifting on webpages.
Indeed, according to The Poynter Institute’s Eyetrack III study of reader behavior:
Think of subheads as the icing on the cake.
Skimmers look at subheads to learn what content you’re offering on a web page, blog post or news release.… Read the full article
Subheads tell readers what content exists on a page and how different sections relate to the others. That guides readers to the copy they want to read and shows them how the parts fit together.… Read the full article
The other day, I found a blog post of interest to me: “Maximizing student productivity: Tips for successful internship programs.”
My intern was scheduled to arrive in three minutes, so I quickly skimmed the story.… Read the full article
Too often, communicators crank out captions (aka cutlines) in the 15 minutes before happy hour on a Friday night.… Read the full article
Pull quotes — aka callouts, breakout quotes or pullout quotes — are “the print equivalent of a sound bite,” according to the authors of The Newsletter Editor’s Desk Book
Actually, I think they’re more like movie trailers.… Read the full article
I’m often amazed at the amount of energy writers put into perfecting the sentence structure in the fourth paragraph of their piece when those same folks toss off a headline in the 17 seconds before happy hour on a Friday afternoon.… Read the full article
Users look for links on pages like puppies look for your best shoes.
Or so say Kara Pernice, Kathryn Whitenton and Jakob Nielsen, the authors of How People Read on the Web.… Read the full article
Here’s one secret of successful marketing copywriters: They steal.
Especially headlines. If a headline’s been proven to work in the past, good direct mail copywriters will use it again and again.… Read the full article
One way to avoid repeating yourself in your news headline and deck: Answer “What happened?”… Read the full article
