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Usability 101: Introduction to Usability

by JAKOB NIELSEN on February 17, 2004

Topics: Email

Summary: E­newsletters that are informative, convenient, and timely are often preferredover other media. However, a new study found that only 11% of newsletters were readthoroughly, so layout and content scannability are paramount.

Email newsletters continue to be one of the most important ways to communicate with customerson the Internet. Newsletters build relationships with users, and also offer users an added socialbenefit in that they can forward relevant newsletters to friends and colleagues. Still, users arehighly critical of newsletters that waste their time, and often ignore or delete newsletters that haveinsufficient usability.

User ResearchOur first study of newsletter usability was in 2002. This is very recent, considering that userbehavior doesn't typically change much from year to year. Normally, I wouldn't retest a particulardesign domain so soon, but newsletters are different than other media for several reasons. First,the email user experience has actually changed substantially, especially concerning spam.Second, we wanted to focus our new study more on the user experience of receiving and readingnewsletters; the first study mainly tested the usability of newsletters' subscribing, unsubscribing,and account maintenance processes.

We conducted the new study remotely using a diary methodology, which allowed a widegeographical distribution of participants. We tested participants from twelve states across the U.S.,along with users in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. We studied

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101 of the 345 newsletters that participants were already subscribed to on their own initiative,testing users' newsletter experiences over a four­week period in most cases, and a two­weekperiod in a few cases.

This longitudinal approach allowed more emphasis on how people deal with incomingnewsletters during their workday . It also let us test many more B2B and intranet newslettersthan we could cover in the first study, which mainly tested B2C newsletters. Of the newslettersreceived by users in our second study, 65% were for personal purposes and 40% were forbusiness purposes (users viewed 5% of newsletters as both personal and business, so we countedthem twice).

Combining the data from the two studies, we identified 127 design guidelines for email newsletterusability . This compares with 79 guidelines identified in the first study. The old guidelines continueto be valid: after all, two years is a short time period and best practices don't change that quickly.However, our new study's focus on different aspects of the newsletter user experience let us add48 new guidelines and slightly refine some of the existing ones.

Spam Is a Fact of LifeAlthough there is a little good news about the impact of spam on email newsletters, the news ismostly bad. The good news is that, compared to past study participants, users in our most recentstudy were better able to differentiate legitimate opt­in newsletters from unsolicited messages.Spam now has a very prominent profile in terms of popular awareness, press coverage, and thesheer amount of it that's hitting inboxes. Users have thus developed a reasonable understanding ofthe phenomenon, rather than simply being baffled about unexpected messages.

The bad news is that increased spam has made people even more stressed and impatient whenprocessing their inboxes. Users have less tolerance than ever for newsletters that waste their time.

We've also found that users often employ their spam filters to avoid newsletters that they nolonger want. Instead of unsubscribing, which users often view as too cumbersome, they simply telltheir spam­blocker that the newsletter is spam. Voila: the newsletter no longer arrives in the inbox.

The fact that many users will declare a newsletter to be spam when they tire of it has terrifyingimplications: legitimate newsletters might get blacklisted and thus ISPs might block their deliveryto other subscribers . This is a compelling reason to increase the usability of the unsubscribeprocess: better to lose a subscriber than to be listed as spam.

Scannability

In our study, users' most frequent complaint was about newsletters that arrived too often . And,when we let them vent, the most frequent advice our study participants had for newsletter editorswas to " keep it brief ."

Newsletters must be designed to facilitate scanning. In our first study, participants read 23% of thenewsletters thoroughly. In our second study, two years later, only 11% of the newsletters wereread thoroughly . This drop in percentage of thoroughly read newsletters is a good indication ofthe increased volume of email users have to process.

Users' dominant mode of dealing with email newsletters is to skim them: that's what happened to57% of the newsletters in our second study. The remaining newsletters were either never read(22%) or saved for later reading (10%) . Of course, many of the newsletters that users "save" willnever actually be read: once they scroll below the visible area of the inbox, they may never beseen again.

Sometimes, users simply skim the headlines to get an update or overview of what's going on in thenewsletter's target area. As one user said, "I like to keep up to date in the industry, but rarely delvedeeper than the cover page." Other times, users deliberately pick out a few elements that theydeem most important and ignore the rest. As another user said, "I review the contents by companyand only read the companies of interest to me."

Designing for users who scan rather than read is essential for a newsletter's survival. Scannabilityis important for websites as well, but it's about 50% more important for newsletters. Theimplications? Layouts must be designed to let users quickly grasp each issue's content and zero inon specifics. Content and writing styles must support users who read only part of the material.

Immediate UtilityNewsletters must be current and timely, as indicated by three of the four main reasons that userslisted for why a certain newsletter was the most valuable they received. Each of the followingreasons were given by more than 40% of users:

Work­related news and/or activities in their own company or other companies (mentioned by 2/3 of users)

Prices and sales

Personal interests and hobbies

Events, deadlines, and important dates

As demonstrated by this list, there's pretty much a "what have you done for me lately"phenomenon at play, where newsletters must justify their inbox space on a daily basis. Havingbeen relevant in the past is not enough. Because of the medium's immediacy, newsletters must berelevant today and address the user's specific needs in the moment.

However, because newsletters build relationships with readers, and because it's so easy forreaders to ignore individual editions, newsletters do have some leeway here. The key is for anewsletter to be predictably relevant at particular times. During periods in which a newsletter isn'trelevant to users, they can simply ignore it rather than unsubscribing.

For example, a speech pathologist at an elementary school said that she could only purchase newproducts at the end of the school year and that she ignored product­related newsletters the rest ofthe year. Still, she didn't unsubscribe; thus she would still be getting the newsletters when herbudget arrived and reading them could help inform her purchases.

Future of E­NewslettersIn our 2002 newsletter usability report, I said about the future of email newsletters: "There may benone. Legitimate use of email is at war with spam, and spam may be winning."

Although two years is a very short period in which to assess big trends, I now believe that thisassessment was too negative. Email newsletters are so powerful that the best of them do have afuture, despite increasingly adverse conditions.

Ever­increasing information overload is certainly making users reluctant to sign up for more email.And, once newsletters arrive in the user's inbox, they might simply be deleted as part of a ruthlessmass deletion procedure aimed at the morning's spam. Finally, as discussed above, fear of spamand other email abuse is keeping users from dealing rationally with newsletter subscriptions.

The fight for inbox survival might therefore leave room for only the most useful, targetednewsletters, leaving less valued newsletters in the dust. But good newsletters have a futurebecause they establish relationships with users and continually deliver benefits.

When we asked users to describe the benefits of email newsletters, three reasons stood out, eachbeing highlighted by more than one­third of users:

Informative : They keep users up to date (mentioned by two­thirds of the users).Convenient : They're delivered straight to the user's information central and require no further action beyonda simple click.

Timely : They offer current information and real­time delivery.

Newsletters that leverage these advantages (and other points that users mentioned) have a stablefuture. To survive, newsletters need only give users specific benefits that help them with life orwork issues in the here and now.

Comparing email newsletters with other media, one user said: "Bottom line, I'd rather have it in anemail newsletter than in the regular mail. I can click Delete if I don't want it; I don't have to throwanything away; and it is usually easier to unsubscribe if you don't want to get anymore."

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Convenience rules.

In fact, this is one of the few times that we've found the virtual world to be better and moreconvenient than the physical world . Websites, for example, typically have such poor usability thatthey compare very unfavorably with real­world stores or in­person services and communities. Incontrast, email newsletters have a very strong position.

To capitalize on their potential, email newsletters must be carefully targeted, not just at narrowreadership segments , but also at particular problems or situations that each segment faces.Broad­based, chatty, or generic information is less appropriate for email newsletters.

The Wall Street Journal recently noted the poor prospects of a newsletter "targeted at women." But50% of the population is not exactly a narrow target, and generic information that's not situation­specific doesn't benefit from email's special characteristic. Not all media forms are good for allpurposes. The Internet has never been a mass medium; newsletters are even less suited for massaudiences. But they shine for narrowcast services, which can be exceptionally lucrative.

Full Report

The full report on email newsletter usability with 221 design guidelines for newsletters is availablefor download.

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Research Reports

Email Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion andLoyalty

Vol. 12: Transactional Email and ConfirmationMessages

Articles

E­Mail Newsletters: Increasing Usability

Bush vs. Kerry: Email Newsletters Rated

E­Mailing Press Releases to Journalists

Email Newsletters Pick Up Where Websites Leave Off

Email Newsletters: Surviving Inbox Congestion

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