A page with a huge block of text is an eyesore to anyone trying to read it. So how can you break up your page? Thanks to behavioral science, we now have an answer: Formatting your content to maximize its readability.
As I was helping a colleague of mine with his Squidoo Lens today, I started thinking about how most small business marketing materials follow similar formats. It’s not just the content of your website, newsletter, blog or print materials that matters: the formatting of this content determines how much your content is read and absorbed. Current research (using eyetracking software) shows us exactly how users read and scan through material to determine which items are worth their time. How can you increase the readability of your web pages, newsletters, and marketing materials? For the do-it-yourselfer, follow these tips:
- Use bullet points!
Bullet points are a great way to list your ideas in a concise format. - Edit your material for relevance and length.
Don’t create an emotional attachment to your business writing—snip at will to keep your information on task! - Use typography and font hierarchy.
In your style guides or stylesheets, designate different font treatments for headings, subsections, body text, and links. On this site, we use one set of styles on the article title, another for a subheading, another for the body, and finally another for some subtext on the footer. - Write, rewrite, and really focus on your headings and subheadings.
Your section titles can make or break the information that comes after them. Being precise and clear will help you to get more readers for the rest of your information! - Write in an easy-to-understand, conversational tone.
Using too much technical jargon or writing text that doesn’t flow will lose your readers. No one likes to feel stupid! - Increase your line height.
This blog’s stylesheet uses a line-height property on all paragraphs of 150%, which increases the white space between lines and makes the text easer to read. - Break up your text with paragraphs and punctuation.
Additional Resources
- Copywriting
- Dartmouth Web Teaching Articles: Writing for the Web
- Email Newsletters: Surviving Inbox Congestion by Dr. Jakob Nielsen
- Scannable Content from ProBlogger
- Web Writing Basics
- Writing Articles from A List Apart
- Writing on the Web by Dr. Jakob Nielsen
- Writing Well for the Web: Webreference’s Quick and Easy Tips for Non-writers
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