Website Readability Can Affect Sales

Travis McAshanDevelopment
Jul 2010

In a nutshell, making your site easier to read is surprisingly easier than you think. In fact with a little effort your content will be more friendly, scannable, and attractive to your readers.

Remember high school, when your teacher would assign reading for homework. Those endless pages of text that you were forced to read through. Well, your customers are not being forced to read your text so it’s time to make your text look like a well-formatted easy to read website and NOT the old science book anyone would hate to read.

Write short sentences and short paragraphs.

Try to keep your sentences nice and simple. And, with some exceptions limit your paragraphs to just 3-4 sentences.

Allow lots of white space.

No crowding. Separate your paragraphs with a clean, clear line of empty space. This helps for “scan-ability” and increases usability.

Write meaningful subheads.

Break up the content with the mini-headlines, in bold print, that helps tell your story and interrupts the monotony of long strings of text.

Use bulleted lists to summarize content.

Use bulleted lists instead of paragraphs to make your content more “scan-able” for your readers. Many times a paragraph is much easier to read as a list instead of 2-3 sentences.

Bring attention to key phrases.

You can add special formatting, such as boldface, italics, or different colors text, to help highlight the most important phrases or information.

Use inverse pyramid style of writing.

Present key ideas, points, and conclusions first, followed by less important information and background materials.

Present one idea per paragraph.

When creating your content break apart you ideas into the essential points for your readers then give them small “bites” to choose from.

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