LINMO

Guidelines: Page Length

One of the most important differences between hard copy (i.e., printed on paper) books and web sites is with regard to the length of pages. That is, on the former the length is virtually always uniform, whereas on the latter it is variable. This is, of course, the result of the very different technologies that are used to produce hard copy books and web sites.

Obviously, there is no advantage to be derived from attempting to keep all pages on a web site equal in length, and there is clearly a major benefit from allowing variability. In fact, along with the availability of hyperlinks, variability of page lengths is fundamental to the optimal organization of information on content-rich web sites, as described by the LINMO model. That is, it makes it possible for the logical module (i.e., the basic unit of organization) to become the page, in contrast to the chapter for printed books.

The LINMO guideline for page length is very simple. It is that the length should be exactly what is necessary to cover a subtopic of the main topic of the site when that subtopic is written as a self-contained article (as all pages should be). (This length is, of course, inclusive of any margins, etc. that are applied consistently throughout the site.) Subtopics should not be split linearly into two or more separate pages. That is, a page should represent a logical unit of content and not multiple logical units or some linear division of a single logical unit.

A self-contained article is one that covers a topic such that it can be useful to readers with a wide range of levels of knowledge about it. It is the type of article that one might find in a well-edited hard copy encyclopedia about a certain field. It is made useful to people with varying levels of knowledge by using a basically inverted pyramid structure, in which the particular subtopic is summarized at the beginning and then all technical terms and concepts are briefly defined soon after their first use (and are also hyperlinked to on-site pages specifically about those terms and concepts when such pages are available).

If a page appears to be becoming extremely long relative to other other pages on a site and/or requires a great deal of vertical scrolling by users, it could be an indicator that the page is actually covering multiple subtopics rather than a single, narrow subtopic. In such case, the topic of that page should be broken up, not sequentially, but into further subtopics that are interconnected with hyperlinks.

This guideline conflicts with the practice used on many web sites of splitting articles, even relatively short ones, into two or more consecutive parts, each on a separate page. It is questionable whether there is any real advantage to such practice other than the fact that it provides the site developer with the opportunity to expose readers to more advertising. Another reason that is given by some site developers is that "other sites do it."

An additional reason that is sometimes suggested for limiting page length is that long pages can have long downloading times. Although there will be some savings in downloading time if a reader only wants to view the first page of a multi-page article, there will likely be a much greater total download time if the reader wants to read all of the parts of the article and thus must download and open each page individually. This might not be an important consideration for users with high speed Internet access; however, it can be more of a problem in much of the world where Internet connections are often slow and erratic.

A sequential division of a topic also has the disadvantage of requiring users to perform extra mouse moves and clicks to read an entire article. This also conflicts with the web usability principle of minimizing the amount of mouse and keyboard activity required by users to achieve a desired objective.