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* Foo Fighters release new cd
* Barbeque beef ribs recipes everyone will like
* Tom Cruise stars in a new movie


Here are some bad examples that are not frontloaded:
* New cd is being released, it’s by the Foo Fighters
* Everyone will love these great new recipes for barbeque beef ribs
* New movie is coming out and it’ll star Tom Cruise

10.2 Don’t Nest, Just List


Remember back in school when the teacher asked you to make an outline and you went nuts making all sorts of nested sub-headings that looked like this?

1. The United States
a. Texas
i. Austin
1. South Austin
a. The 78704 zip code
i. My house


Don’t do that.

Why? Because the last few items could be out of sight for many people when they skim-read. A straight margin is a whole lot easier to scan quickly on the Web.

Nested dot-points and numbers are often used in business and government policy documents and management plans, and you’re not making those, you’re just writing content. Find another way to show the hierarchy of ideas. Web users do not like to try to read through a whole bunch of indentations, and you will lose some people before they even start reading.

10.3 Put web links where people will see them

If you’re putting web links in, make sure they’re where people will see them—not in that bottom right-hand Corner of Death! Yes, people notice links in web content. They’re usually bright blue and underlined, so people notice them. Many people even read links before they look at headlines.

Now that you know that, make it easy for them to get to your links by consistently presenting them in list form or by slamming them right up against the left-hand margin.

Don't put your links in a sentence or they might end up in the invisible right-hand area of the content. Yes, this means you can’t use the old "click here" convention, but for a good reason: it never worked very well anyway.


Here’s an example of a good way to put in links:

“There are several cool skateboarding sites you might want to check out. They really rock and they’ve got some great gear you can pick up for not a lot of bucks.
Skateboard.com
Skatefreak.net
Liv2skat.biz

Here’s an example of a bad way to use links:

If you want to read about the latest in cool tricks, check out skateboard.com. For the lowdown on which pro skaters are doing what and dating who, you want to see skatefreak.net. And one of my very favorite places to read blog is liv2skat.com.

10.4 Never Hide Headers


Remember how I said people look to the upper left? If you’ve been centering your headlines and subheadings, do you still think that’s a good idea? Well, it’s not. Yeah, I know newspapers, magazines and books do it. So do lots of other sites. But that’s just not where people want to look first.

They’ve tested this. Believe it or not, about 10-20 percent of people just literally do not see centered headlines, particularly if they’re in a hurry (and who isn’t these days?

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