Last Thursday, Bryan Eisenberg, one of the smartest people in the world of conversions & analytics, wrote a post called - The Web's Old Wives Tale: People Don't Read Online. An excerpt:

Web developers like to say it. Designers love to say it. Web execs feel good saying it to justify investing as little as possible–and in the lowest quality content they can get away with.

People Don't Read Online? Bull-crap!

If only I had a nickel for every time I've heard that statement, I'd make Bill Gates look like a pauper. Think about it. What's the first thing most people do when they get online… read their email. What's better yet, new research from the Poynter Institute's Eyetrack study released at the American Society of Newspaper Editors (proves the point)...

The Poynter Institute report is enlightening and absolutely valuable, but I think it's dangerous to read this post and assume that all web content can be structured in article format or that people are going to start taking the time to truly read everything on your pages. I still strongly believe in Steve Krug's rule:

People are going to read pages like this:

Article from CNN/Fortune

The topic is interesting, the lead-in makes you want to read the article, it's applicable to you (at least, to most of us) and chances are, if you've reached the page, you're going to want to get the value provided by the writer's story. However, on pages like this:

CNN's Gadget & Tech News Page

Or pages like this:

Grokdotcom's Home Page

And even pages like this (where it really does pay to read and the text blurbs are very short):

SEOmoz's Tool Page

... you won't get users to "read."

In these instances, and virtually all pages that navigate you to an article or blog entry or informational pages that provides exactly what you're looking for, your users are not going to read through the page and decide, based on all the information, what to click. They're going to follow that same anti-reading, quick-scan format described so brilliantly by Mr. Krug. This is the same reason you see so little traffic from Google if you're #8 vs. #1, even if your content, title and description are clearly the better choice for users. It's the same reason the browse rate on all but the best designed websites (and the worst with the most passionate users like MySpace) is so incredibly low. The online experience is all about speed and convenience and only in the rarest of cases will your users really take the time to carefully examine the page - by the time they've gotten to that point, it's because they're so incredibly frustrated that they're willing to give it a shot.

In fact, there's a perfect analogy here - ever watched a guy (yes, I'm stereotyping, but really both genders do this) try to put together a piece of furniture or work a remote control or fix an issue in a piece of unfamiliar software?

Rand: Oh, I've done this before. This is going to be easy.
Mystery Guest: Maybe we should read the directions?
Rand: No, no, trust me, I've done this a million times.
Mystery Guest: OK...

Half an Hour Later

Rand: @#$%!
Mystery Guest: Maybe we should check the directions?
Rand: Fine! But they're just gonna tell me to do the same stupid thing I've been trying to do the whole time
Mystery Guest: ...
Rand: Oh, wait... Now I've got it.
Mystery Guest: Why did I ever agree to marry this guy?

All of us think we know how to use the web - and when web designers and developers don't follow the conventions we're accustomed to and make it blazingly obvious how to interact with their navigation and content, we wind up with scenarios like the one above. Tragic? Yes. Avoidable? Totally.

p.s. Not suggesting that Bryan Eisenberg was arguing with this point; I think he was trying to make a different one, but I'm worried that someone could misinterpret and wind up with some very high abandonment rates.