According to research carried out by the Nielsen Norman Group, people rarely read more than 28% of words on an average visit. In reality, the average is nearer 20%.
Why we should support scanning content
It can prove frustrating to discover how little time people spend reading your copy. Nevertheless, this is not a behavior we can change.
Instead, you should seek to help people scan your content effectively. Doing so will increase engagement, comprehension, and retention of the information you present.
To help people scan, we need to understand why they scan and how they do it.
Why people scan a webpage
When scanning a page, we are seeking to do one of two things:
- Consume and understand the content of a page as quickly as possible.
- Find a specific piece of information we are looking for.
For example, the former could be reading an article that contains new or interesting information. By contrast, the latter might be attempting to complete a specific task, such as finding the opening times of a restaurant.
How people scan a webpage
How much time we spend scanning a page is dependent upon:
- How important the information is to us.
- Whether we are focused on the task in hand.
- Our personality.
- Whether we are task focused or browsing for new information on a topic.
However much time we spend scanning, we tend to scan a page until something grabs our attention, and then we read around that section of the text. Often this involves an approach to scanning referred to as the spotted pattern. That said, we adopt several different approaches depending on the type of content.
Content grabs our attention either by visually standing out or using a word that the user associates with their current task.
It is also worth highlighting that scanning does not always happen linearly. Although we favor the top of the page, we tend to skip around.
We even scan individual paragraphs and sentences with our attention tending to favor words at the beginning and end of each.
How to help people scan a webpage
Understanding that users scan and how they scan enables us to facilitate better this behavior so, increasing engagement, comprehension, and retention.
In particular, consider adopting the following techniques.
Create content hierarchy
Because users scan pages, favoring content at the top, we should provide a hierarchy to our content.
At the top of a page, summarize the content of the page to reassure people that they are in the right place and give them an idea of what the page will tell them.
Organize your content into independent blocks
You can significantly improve how easy a page is to scan by breaking it into content blocks. Instead of thinking in a single narrative that flows from one point to the next, structure your content as standalone content blocks that people can read in any order.
Each block consists of the following elements:
- A heading that summarises the content of the block.
- The content of the block, which should focus on communicating a single message.
- Links to additional information (optional).
- A visual to support the copy (optional).
Organizing your content in this way supports scanning and how people jump in and out of content on a page.
Use formatting to aid scannability
Where you have longer copy blocks, use formatting to break them up. That includes using:
- Headings and sub-headings.
- Highlighting important content with bold or italic.
- Summarising content into lists, like this one.
- Creating “pull out quotes” as you find in magazines to highlight important messages.
- Use links make sense when users do not ready the surrounding text. For example, avoid links that use wording like “click here” or “read more”.
- Make use of content types other than copy where possible to convey information.
Keep your language simple
To improve scanning and retention of information, keep the language used in the copy as simple as possible. That can be done by:
- Use plain language. The kinds of words we use in everyday conversation.
- Use numbers like 1 and 2 instead of writing the numbers out – like one or two.
- Write in short sentences. Include only one idea in every sentence.
- Use active language. For example write, “John loves Mary” not “Mary is loved by John”.
- Other than full stops use the smallest amount of punctuation possible.
- Use bullet points to break up difficult information. But keep your bullet points simple.
- Do not use jargon.
- Do not use abbreviations like “don’t”. Instead, write “do not”.
Provide content creators with adequate training and support
Reading online is unlike reading in other mediums, and so the way we write content has to be different too. Just because somebody is an accomplished writer in other formats does not mean they can write good web copy.
Those writing for the web must be given adequate training or be supported by an editorial team who has extensive experience writing online.
