How write good titles and headings for web readers who don't read much text

Original writing by Jakob Neilsen, from useit.com

On the main BBC homepage and on its dedicated news page. Most sites routinely violate headline guidelines, but BBC editors consistently do an awesome job. On a recent visit, the BBC list of headlines for "other top stories" read as follows. "Italy buries first quake victims," "Romania blamed over Moldova riots," "Ten arrested in UK anti-terrorism raids," "Villagers hurt in West Bank clash," "Mass Thai protest over leadership," "Around the world in 38 words." The average headline consumed a mere 5 words and 34 characters. The amount of meaning they squeezed into this brief space is incredible: every word works hard for its living. Most writers are rarely that concise.

It's hard enough to write for the Web and meet the guidelines for concise, scannable, and objective content. It's even harder to write Web headlines, which must be short (because people don't read much online), rich in information scent, clearly summarizing the target article, front-loaded with the most important keywords (because users often scan only the beginning of list items), understandable out of context (because headlines often appear without articles, as in search engine results), predictable, so users know whether they'll like the full article before they click (because people don't return to sites that promise more than they deliver).

Each headline conveys the gist of the story on its own, without requiring you to click. Even better, each gives you a very good idea of what you'll get if you do click and lets you judge — with a high degree of confidence — whether you'll be interested in the full article. As a result, you won't waste clicks. You'll click through to exactly those news items you want to read.

The site's top news headlines warrant a few additional keystrokes. One breaking story, for example, had the following headline: "Suspected US missile strike kills four militants in tribal region in north-west Pakistan, officials say." Readers would certainly know what happened, and would even get the general picture after the first 4 words. To save space, the headline's writer might have deferred the attribution to the unnamed "officials" to the article itself. That information isn't something people need to know at the headline-scanning stage; an exception would be if a famous person or controversial source had claimed responsibility for the missile strike, in which case the attribution might be a reason for users to click.

Also, using "4" might be better than using "four" given the general guideline to prefer numerals for online writing. But in this particular headline, the word works as well as the numeral because users aren't likely to be scanning the front page for data about the specific number of militants killed. To research such facts, people would typically start by searching for articles about the missile strike, and then scan one or two to get the numbers. Roots of Success? So why is the BBC so good when most others are so bad? Maybe it's in the BBC's blood: The news organization originated as a radio station, where word count is at a premium and you must communicate clearly to immediately grab listeners. In a spoken medium, each word is gone as soon as it's uttered, so convoluted exposition confuses even more than it does in print.

Ceefax (one of the few surviving videotext services) also helps instill conciseness in BBC's journalists. Text on low-def televisions has horrible resolution and only allows for a minute word count (somewhat like mobile). Whatever the reason, BBC News headlines are almost always written to the highest Web usability standards. Visit the site daily for a week and try to apply some of the BBC editors' discipline to your own headlines.

In conclusion, precise communication in a handful of words? The editors at BBC News achieve it every day, offering remarkable headline usability.

The requirements for online headlines are very different from printed headlines because they are used differently. Online headlines are often displayed out of context: as part of a list of articles, in an email program's list of incoming messages, in a search engine hitlist, or in a browser's bookmark menu or other navigation aid. Some of these situations are very out of context: search engine hits can relate to any random topic, so users don't get the benefit of applying background understanding to the interpretation of the headline. The same goes for email subjects. Even when a headline is displayed together with related content, the difficulty of reading online and the reduced amount of information that can be seen in a glance make it harder for users to learn enough from the surrounding data. In print, a headline is tightly associated with photos, decks, subheads, and the full body of the article, all of which can be interpreted in a single glance. Online, a much smaller amount of information will be visible in the window, and even that information is harder and more unpleasant to read, so people often don't do so. While scanning the list of stories on a site like news.com, users often only look at the highlighted headlines and skip most of the summaries. Because of these differences, the headline text has to stand on its own and make sense when the rest of the content is not available. Sure, users can click on the headline to get the full article, but they are too busy to do so for every single headline they see on the Web. I predict that users will soon be so deluged with email that they will delete messages unseen if the subject line doesn't make sense to them.

If you create listings of other people's content, it is almost always best to rewrite their headlines. Very few people currently understand the art of writing online microcontent that works when placed elsewhere on the Web. Thus, to serve your users better, you have to do the work yourself. Clearly explain what the article (or email) is about in terms that relate to the user. Microcontent should be an ultra-short abstract of its associated macrocontent. Written in plain language: no puns, no "cute" or "clever" headlines. No teasers that try to entice people to click to find out what the story is about. Users have been burned too often on the Web to have time to wait for a page to download unless they have clear expectations for what they will get. In print, curiosity can get people to turn the page or start reading an article. Online, it's simply too painful for people to do so. Skip leading articles like "the" and "a" in email subjects and page titles (but do include them in headlines that are embedded within a page).

Shorter microcontent is more scannable, and since lists are often alphabetized, you don't want your content to be listed under "T" in a confused mess with many other pages starting with "the". Make the first word an important, information-carrying one. Results in better position in alphabetized lists and facilitates scanning. For example, start with the name of the company, person, or concept discussed in an article. Do not make all page titles start with the same word: they will be hard to differentiate when scanning a list. Move common markers toward the end of the line. For example, the title of this page is Microcontent: Headlines and Subject Lines (Alertbox). In email sent from your website, make the "From" field clarify the customer relationship and reduce the appearance of spam or anonymous intrusion (but don't use the name of the customer service rep. unless the user has actually established a relationship with that person: mail from unknown people also has a tendency to be deleted and will be harder for users to find in a search).