I’ve had a few people complain that the site is confusing, and while I’ve certainly felt their pain I’ve been at a loss concerning what to do about it.

Then last night I received an email that gave me a helpful clue: it’s too hard to figure out which links lead to the surveys, and which lead to the results of the surveys. I could actually feel the proverbial light bulb hovering just above my head as it lit up.

I’d been assuming that when a link had “information” in it, that people would know this referred to results. And the same for “survey” in a link referring to the page where someone could fill out a survey.

The email helped me realize that, by virtually eliminating verbs in an effort to use as few words as possible, I’d actually made the site much harder to comprehend.

So the last thing I did late last night was reword the home page links to include either “view” or “provide,” depending on whether the target page is one where the results are posted or one where a survey can be filled out. I’ll similarly be adding real, live verbs elsewhere on the site.

I took a writing course in graduate school that stressed the important of using action verbs in sentences to make them readily understandable and effective. Unfortunately, I had forgotten this lesson. Campbell, thanks for reminding me.

No doubt further improvements need to be made. But hopefully this one helps.