You’ve created a corporate website – that’s a great first step. You’ve spent hours creating content for your website that will be hugely beneficial to current and potential customers. But then you find that people aren’t saying on your site long enough to really dig into all of the information that you’ve taken so much care in writing.
What can you do to make sure your content is keeping users on your website?
So, how exactly do people access content on the web?
More and more often people use a variety of devices to access content on the web. In fact, more people are using smart phones and tablets than desktops and laptops, which allows people to access the Internet almost anywhere and at almost any time.
While this is great for users, it means that as you are creating content, you can no longer assume that you know how people are accessing your content. There are some things, however, that you can assume about your users no mater what kind of device they are using:
- Users want to find information fast.
- Users skim pages to find what they are looking for.
- Because they can access the Internet anywhere, users are getting more distracted when browsing the web.
What can be done to format content so it’s easier for people to read?
Five Tips For More Readable Content
- Make it short and sweet. Keep your sentences short and break your content up into short paragraphs.
- Use headlines and lists. These make it easier for users to skim your content and find relevant information.
- Use a font that is easy to read. Tip: sans serif fonts (such as Helvetica, Verdana, or Arial) are often easiest to read for body copy displayed on the screen.
- Make sure there is enough contrast between the text and the background. Whether it’s due to monitor settings or due to visual impairments, low contrasting text is hard to read for some users.
- Don’t use images to display text. An image with text on it can’t always be viewed clearly on all devices. (It is also not going to help you with your SEO, as search engines don’t read the text that you’ve placed on the image.)
After you’ve drafted up your original content, go back to revisit, reformat and rewrite your content to constantly improve it’s readability to users.
