The mapped story format is an interesting way to make longer news stories more reader-friendly.

Devised by the Calgary Herald’s David Hedley—a friend and former colleague—the mapped story format begins with the summary written in a classic inverted pyramid style.

The body of the story is organized into mini chapters, dealing with one news element at a time. The mini-chapters are led by informative subheads, signaling to readers what comes next.

Hedley suggests the mapped story format offers several advantages over the commonly used inverted pyramid, including improved clarity, scannability and comprehensibility.

While this guideline focuses on news, the principles apply to any field of writing. In fact, it works very well on the Web, where well-versed designers frequently utilize anchors, links, subheads and digestible chunks of layered web copy to promote positive online experiences.

Read entire report: Mapped story format helps readers

Websites that let users customize the UI have the same measured usability as regular sites, reveals a recent study by Jakob Nielsen. Websites for customizing products, however, score substantially worse due to complex workflow.

Designs are often adapted to individual users so different people see different screens, both in applications and on websites. Nielsen notes there are two main ways to “individualize” the user experience, depending on who initiates the adaptation:

Customization

Customization happens when the user tells the computer what he or she prefers to see.

Personalization

Personalization happens when the computer modifies its behavior to suit its predictions about the current user’s interests.

The study concludes customization is complicated, both technologically and design-wise.

“To get a user from blank slate to fully customized interface or product takes exceptional design skill,” said Nielsen. “It also requires cooperation among multiple groups to assemble, organize, and architect a usable customization path.”

He added: “Customization isn’t something you can throw together in a couple weeks, and businesses who approach it in that manner are risking their reputation and revenues.”

Read Nielsen’s full report: Customization of UIs and products.

It seems people who search on Bing could be more commercial than Google searchers.

According to a study by search-advertising network Chitika, visitors who arrive at sites from organic search results on Bing are 55% more likely to click on an ad than if they arrived from Google.

Chitika looked at the click-through rates from 32 million ad impressions across its network of more than 50,000 websites in a week this past July. Visitors from Bing clicked on an ad 1.5% of the time on average, versus a 0.97% click-through rate for Google visitors, and a 1.24% click-through rate for Yahoo.

MarketingSherpa recently did a study that compared SEO improvements of companies that rely on in-house staff versus agencies.

It reported in-house SEO efforts saw a 38% lift during a six-month period. Meanwhile, agencies achieved a 110% lift during the same period.

It highlights the opportunity specialists can deliver. Limited staff or jack-of-all-trades can no longer keep up with the assorted online technologies and tactics. While this is the case for everything from web design to development to copywriting, it’s especially true in the SEO realm.

Consider the fact that today’s websites compete with more than one trillion pages, versus just one billion pages in 2000. With the Web getting more complex, and more competition vying for attention, deep knowledge in a specific area can equate to a major competitive advantage.

Few would argue the Internet has changed how we live and work. More than one billion people rely on it globally, and more are jumping onboard daily.

What’s especially interesting is that the demographics are expanding. For instance, a recent Pew Internet study revealed broadband usage among adults ages 65 or older grew from 19% in May, 2008 to 30% in April, 2009. Moreover, two groups of low-income Americans saw strong broadband growth from 2008 to 2009.

Web designers, developers and copywriters should take note as these trends could impact how websites should look and function, and what messages should be conveyed. For example, retirement homes often gear their web content toward sons and daughters of mature parents. However, if more mature people are surfing and spending time on the Web, it might be more effective to speak directly to the retirees or potential guests.

The study also revealed Americans value the Internet more than TVs or cell phones. Believe it. Even during the economic recession, more than twice as many respondents said they had cut back or cancelled a cell phone plan or cable TV service versus Internet service.

More and more people are realizing the Internet connects and empowers. And the smart businesses are making the most of this long-term and lucrative trend.

The demand for good web design is increasing, revealed a recent Webcopyplus online poll. Almost 25% of web users indicated “poor visual presentation” as the number one element that drives them away from websites.

Only 6.6% of web users who participated in a similar 2007 online poll indicated ‘poor visual presentation” as the main reason to abandon a website. That equates to a 267% increase during the two-year period.

Our web content specialists believe the increased desire for quality design comes from the fact that Internet users have become increasingly sophisticated. Consequently, more of today’s Internet users understand that a well designed website makes it possible to achieve more, with less time and effort.

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Call it a marketing gimmick or a historical milestone, some say Web 2.0 will soon make room for Web 3.0.

There are rumblings that Web 3.0 may be able to search meta tags and labels to a much greater degree – thanks to the combination of ‘tagging’ that comes with the social media culture and advancing technology. The expected outcome: sites will spit exceptionally relevant results back at users.

A lot of discussions are based on what’s called Semantic Web. It’s believed computers will scan and interpret collections of information called ontologies using software agents. An ontology, by the way, is a file that defines the relationships amongst a group of terms. Smarter software, smarter computers!

Few would argue the surfacing technology will make the Web smarter, more efficient and profitable. For instance, businesses will gain piercing insights into customer behaviors, which could be used to serve them better (and reach deeper into their pocketbooks).

For business owners and consumers alike, Web 3.0 will likely make it easier to sort through and benefit from the colossal loads of information floating aimlessly around the Web. Perhaps there is a real Google killer not too far off in the horizon.

When will we be exploring (or exploiting) Web 3.0? TutZone’s “Bariski” predicts Web 3.0 will likely get rolling in 2010 and end by 2020. He noted: “It will be the most evolutionary development of that decade because now Web is not just technically orienting people, but it has major social contributions also.”

Bariski even peered into a crystal ball to provide some thought-provoking predictions.

As online visitors often jump from one link to another, you should treat your links like headlines. They should deliver your primary message in as few words as possible.

In fact, a recent study by Jakob Nielsen suggests the first couple of words in your links are imperative.

Nielsen reports: “Online reading is often dominated by the F-pattern. That is, people read the first few listed items somewhat thoroughly — thus the cross-bars of the ‘F’ — but read less and less as they continue down the list, eventually passing their eyes down the text’s left side in a fairly straight line. At this point, users see only the very beginning of the items in a list.”

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More is not enough. People want more than others, suggests a new study on how money motivates.

University of Bonn researchers used brain scanning to show how much people take others’ earnings to measure our own success. Economists and brain scientists tested male subjects in pairs, asking them to perform simple tasks and promising payments for success. Using magnetic resonance tomographs, the researchers examined the volunteers’ brain activities.

Participants who got more money than their co-players showed much stronger activation in the brain’s “reward center” than when both players received the same amount. So it’s not what we have that matters most, but rather what we have in relation to others.

It’s an odd trait, to be sure. “Keeping up with the Joneses” robs us of being grateful for what we have, and living blissfully in the present.

As far as marketing goes, “get ahead of your peers” proves to be a powerful motivator, and marketing and sales types will likely exploit this on an increasing level.

Leave the Joneses in the dust might appear on billboards and websites near you.

Online visitors tend to scan the search results in order, confirmed recent eye-tracking studies conducted by Google.

“They start from the first result and continue down the list until they find a result they consider helpful and click it — or until they decide to refine their query,” reported the search engine giant.

Using heatmaps, the eye-tracking study revealed most users found what they were looking for within the first two results, and they seldom went further down the page.

See the full Google report.