I was very happy to have caught the reprise of Luke Wroblewski’s “Content Page Design Best Practices” at the IA Summit. Thanks to Luke for doing it twice!

Here’s what I twittered during the talk:

• Content = making good on the links that sites deliver across the web
• Before redesign, Chicago Tribune article page: 24% content, 76% site overhead
• Meanwhile The New York Times has 90% of page devoted to content
• In Taiwan, if you post a question on Yahoo! Answers you can get an answer in 45 seconds. It’s 5 minutes in the US
• 1. Make sure expectations are set with link titles.
• 2. Make good on promise with page content.
• 3. Use visual hierarchy to manage attention.
• White space helps create visual hierarchy. People don’t stay long. 25% docs displayed less than 4 seconds. 52% of all visits less than 10 seconds.
• Deliver on promises. Favor visual hierarchy over site hier. Short, concise & scannable allows for more engagement with content
• “Spare us your site map” It’s inserted in the sidebar of Chicago Tribune website
• The simplest choice on a webpage is the Back button
• If viewing of a link falls from 80% to 60%, likelihood of it being clicked falls by 50%
• Context = where you are and what you can do there. But we can use where you came from to modify the view
• Visual design is used to build credibility

Read more about content page design on Luke’s blog. Download the PDF of slides by clicking below: