Good features of HTML newsletter design

HTML newsletters design is more effective than plain text newsletters, and than paper newsletters. The interactivity afforded by hypertext is invaluable and lets newsletter authors trim their works and make them scannable. Here are some things to do in HTML newsletters:

• keep writing simple and to-the-point
• use links extensively
• use short human-generated summaries and tables of contents
• use bulleted lists
• use hierarchical elements

Keep writing simple and to-the-point

This guideline is fairly straightforward, but it is important nonetheless. Like all online writing, newsletters should be simple and to-the-point. Consider how many emails or other snippets of text the user is likely to read in one day or one session, and remember that they are going to want substance, quickly. If filler seems necessary, then there probably isn't enough content to make a newsletter worthwhile.

Use links extensively

Links are great: provide short summaries of articles, and link to longer and more complete versions. Provide the links in context, and use them as they would be used in a typical web page, rather than in a big bunch at the beginning or end of the newsletter.

Use short human-generated summaries and tables of contents

The first thing in an HTML newsletter should be a descriptive title, followed by an easy to use, hopefully hyperlinked table of contents. Make sure that the links are either clearly external (will launch a browser), or that they lead to anchors in the newsletter. Use the former if the newsletter doesn't actually contain the articles, and the latter if the newsletter does contain articles.

Make sure that if the newsletter contains a bunch of abstracts of longer articles found elsewhere that the summaries are written by humans rather than generated by a computer (à la search engine summary report) or just appropriated from the first paragraph or sentence of the article. The summary should be as meaningful as possible.

Use bulleted lists

Lists, instead of paragraphs of text, make the newsletter scannable. Explain main points following a short (one or two sentence) summary by using a short bulleted list. The table of contents could also be a bulleted list.

Use hierarchical elements

HTML offers H, or heading, tags, which let the newsletter author specify a document hierarchy. For both accessibility and visual reasons, use the hierarchy. H1 tags should be for the newsletter title, and higher number H tags for subitems of all kinds. Take advantage of what HTML offers in terms of document hierarchy. For example, this page has a hierarchy specified with H tags that makes it easier to scan and more accessible.

By Netmaxims Solutions