[Sigia-l] Next article in Opinion (10 of 14)

[Listera]

Jared M. Spool:
> the text is less informative and more "catchy", thereby not communicating as
> much scent as they could.

Hmm. You're against "catchy"? It's perhaps the sole purpose of those
widgets: to get you to click. Just like TV promos: ...and film at 11. You
and I may not like it, but are you saying these promos do not fulfill their
primary requirement (to get people to click)?

> Our studies consistently show that ornamental graphics don't
> add any real value...

This is *extremely* hard to "test." Advertising industry would not exist if
"ornamental" was taken out of the equation. Not all ads "work" obviously,
(but then what does?) but to say ornamental doesn't add any value is purely
a personal opinion.

> Could you get the same value from the links with just a text-based
> presentation?

I'm tellin' ya, all this pictorial stuff on the Internets is just ruinin'
it. Time was, you could get a nice junk o' text and that's all ya got and
that was good. Where's Gopher when you need it? :-)

> The fact that the reader needs to use the little scrolling controls to see
> the other articles is problematic. I actually never noticed this element
> before until you pointed it out (and I probably visit the site 3-4 times
> per week). 

That's a design implementation problem that I solved on some project in the
past. So I thought about telling C|Net, but I don't like their
editorial/political slant, so I won't bother. :-)

> I'm also intrigued that the image is placed in the middle of the article,
> instead of at the end. If the reader is not done reading, will they be
> distracted by the article?

Jared, it's about promo, clicks, circulation, etc. ;-)

Ziya
Nullius in Verba