Web Design for Readability and Results!

People scan a web page as opposed to reading it word by word, as they might with a printed page. The result being that users will only read the information they are looking for after scanning the contents of a page.

Studies have shown that 79% of users scan web pages and only 16% actually read each word. Therefore to get the most out of your precious content you need to make it easy to scan and read. Some of the ways you can do this include:

• Providing well thought out headings and sub headings
• Highlight the relevant keywords
• Provide attention grabbing information in the first few words of a paragraph
• Use one idea per paragraph, keeping them short
• Avoid background images to clutter text
• Don’t use fancy fonts
• Less is best – reduce your word count
• Link to other content and make your links contrast to other text

Readers look at web pages in an F shaped pattern. A study on http://www.useit.com tracked the eye movement of over 230 readers and found that they look across the entire top of a document horizontally, look across less of the page a bit further down then look at the left hand side moving vertically down.

So how do you capture your reader’s attention for results?

1. Provide the important content in the first paragraph
2. Provide useful tools in the top right hand corner, such as shopping basket contents, pricing or a call to action
3. Provide headings and sub headings to catch the eye
4. Use words to catch a readers attention at the beginning of a paragraph
5. After capturing their attention, give them what they want

The rules are fairly simple, as you’ve just seen. To get results provide the information in a user-friendly format and then provide what your reader is looking for.

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