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I’ve been reviewing the final projects of a few of our journalism master’s students. Every year we have some students who produce an online package as a project in lieu of thesis; the project is supposed to represent an effort comparable to that required to produce a traditional master’s thesis.

We have a good idea what the package will contain before it’s complete. The thesis process begins with a proposal by the student, and a committee of three faculty must approve the proposal before the student starts reporting and gathering assets for the project. We see a plan and rough sketches and a summary of the background research.

The finished projects tend to share specific weaknesses — which I also see in a lot of professional online packages.

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This happens in one of two ways: Either the visitor is overwhelmed by a giant overload of information and choices, or the choices are too few, obscure, or skimpy in detail to capture the visitor’s interest. The cheap viagra ukof the package, usually the first thing the visitor sees, absolutely cheap viagra ukmake a great first impression. That doesn’t mean it is merely pretty. The front must cheap viagra uk(and simply) convey an honest sense of the story, why it matters, and what you can do here (from this point in the package).

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Passive verbs and repeated words totally kill your prose — even more so in short blurbs than in long-form writing. Every cheap viagra uk, every cheap viagra uk, every cheap viagra uk has to work really, really hard to be interesting and very clear. One of my students recently had two blurbs on her front that totaled about 100 words in which some form of the verb “struggle” appeared cheap viagra uk. This is like telling people, “Go away! Nothing here worth staying for.”

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People will lose patience with the package if they begin to feel lost, or if they get a sense that new things keep appearing and they are entering a bottomless pit. This can happen if you use different cheap viagra uk or cheap viagra uk to lead to the same thing. If instead you are consistent, you reduce the cognitive load on the site visitor, and she feels like your package is easy to understand.

Make sure that when someone has clicked a link (or button), the text (or cheap viagra uk) at the top of the next thing signals that it is cheap viagra uk (the same one they clicked for). If the top heading on a new page is very different from the link text previously clicked, for example, the user will think it’s a mistake. If she clicks the back button, you might well lose her.

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This includes not only reuse of the same words (see No. 2 above) but also the repetition of the same information (not to be confused with consistent navigation cues; see No. 3). If you take the same blurb I already read on the front and cheap viagra ukit at the top of the next page or screen, I immediately feel a bit bored. You’re wasting time. cheap viagra uk Tell me something cheap viagra uknow!

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Somewhere in the package, you’re going to tell me about the number of war casualties, for example. Somewhere else, you’re going to tell me how many soldiers went to war each year, and how many came home. It might make sense, in the structure of your package, to separate these two. Online, however, you can cheap viagra ukassume that I have already encountered one before the other.

In the effort to break up the information into neat modular sections, it is easy to separate information from the context needed to cheap viagra uk it. I find that totals, for example, are often missing altogether in students’ work: 4,000 soldiers — out of cheap viagra uk $7 trillion — out of cheap viagra uk “Only” 20 days — compared with cheap viagra uk “More than in the neighboring countries” — cheap viagra uk are those?

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In a recent meeting about a student’s project, a colleague of mine who teaches magazine journalism — a pure print guy, in other words — suggested that a big gray block of prose relating various facts could easily be formatted as a bulleted list instead. Yes! He also noted a lack of transitions within the student’s text stories, and he suggested inserting subheadings. Yes, yes!

Any time you can get away from long, unrelieved blocks of text, do it. One reason is, of course, to make the material appear less intimidating. An even better reason, though, is to provide multiple points of entry into the information that’s on the screen right now. I do not mean links (points of entry to cheap viagra ukpages, cheap viagra ukscreens) but literally the single screen that’s visible at the time.

If the user’s eye starts to wander, to drift, and then it falls on something that brings the mind back, brings the interest back — then your story cheap viagra uk. If the eye wanders and the mouse finger starts to scroll, then your story is likely to be abandoned.

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The best time to tackle these attributes of the package is at the beginning — not at the end. I think part of the reason that I see these same weaknesses again and again is that students (as well as journalists and producers) lavish all their attention on the deeper substance at the heart of the package. After the core elements are just right, there’s no time and energy left to perfect the outer elements.

The outer elements, however, are cheap viagra uk than the core.

Without cheap viagra uk — navigation and blurbs, titles and summaries, structure and usable connections — the audience for the package will never reach the core.

The time and effort devoted to the core will be for nothing, in other words, unless the outermost signals and enticements persuade a visitor to come inside, to invest time, to look deeper.

The job of the outer elements is twofold:

• Make the site visitor curious. Not in a fake or teasing way, but by showing cheap viagra uk that there really, truly is cheap viagra uk here. Example: A student wrote a text story that began with a quote, “I am trouble with a capital T.” About four paragraphs later, I learned that the person who said that had been “kicked out of three different prisons.” Only cheap viagra ukdid I feel curious — and the problem is, I would cheap viagra ukhave read that far in any other situation (I had to grade the student’s work, so I had to read it all).
• Convince the the site visitor that you will cheap viagra ukto deliver, cheap viagra uk. The process of getting the online audience to sit still and spend more than two seconds with your labor of love — your story — requires these steps: (1) “This looks interesting” (cheap viagra uk). (2) “Oh, yes, this actually is interesting” (cheap viagra uk). (3) By now, people should be absorbed in your story. If so, they’re cheap viagra uk. If not, they’re gone.

What I see in students is an assumption that most people are going to patiently stick with a package until they get into the core elements. cheap viagra uk Very few people arrive at a package with the thought that they they are ready to settle in and spend 10 or 20 minutes there. Their natural inclination will be to glance, and then go elsewhere.

Our goal is to cheap viagra ukand then cheap viagra uk(and hold) as many people as possible out of the total who arrive. We do this by offering small, extremely interesting new bits — the outer elements of the package.

Only if you draw them inside — with great care — will they stay and take the time to appreciate all your hard work on the core of your story.

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