Founder at M16 Marketing and a Forbes Agency Council member, Don is a leading marketing technologist on a mission to create success stories.
getty
Is the content on your website easy to read? Even if a page of content is well researched and offers valuable information, it will likely suffer from low engagement if it’s difficult to read. Content readability and engagement are connected. When visitors encounter content with poor readability, they may abandon it without taking action. You can improve the readability of your website’s content, however, in several ways.
Stick to a writing style.
You should stick to a specific writing style when creating content. Not to be confused with a writing voice, a writing style is a set of formal writing guidelines. It will help you maintain consistency when creating content. By sticking to a writing style, all of your website’s content will follow the same rules.
Two of the most common writing styles include Associated Press (AP) and Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS). There are nuances between them. AP, for instance, omits the Oxford comma in a series of three or more items, whereas CMOS requires the Oxford comma. AP also requires spelling out numbers zero through nine, whereas CMOS requires spelling out numbers ranging from zero to 100.
You can use AP, CMOS or any other writing style. Just remember to stick to a single writing style so that your website’s content is consistent. Using multiple writing styles, or not using any writing style, will lead to inconsistent content that’s difficult to follow and read.
MORE FOR YOU
Use short sentences.
Content consisting of short sentences is easier to read than content consisting of long sentences. The benefits of short sentences include improved readability and reduced overthinking.
Short sentences allow readers to quickly and easily digest information. Some sentences will inevitably require more words than others. Nonetheless, using short sentences for most of your website’s content will result in improved readability.
Break up content into sections.
In addition to using short sentences, you should break up content into sections. Most website visitors don’t read each word on a given page. Rather, they scan pages while only reading sections of interest. Failure to break up content into sections means visitors won’t be able to scan it.
To break up content into sections, use paragraphs with subheadings. The ideal length for easy-to-read paragraphs is three to five sentences. When publishing multiple paragraphs about a specific subtopic, include a subheading.
Complement with visuals.
You can improve the readability of your website’s content by complementing it with visuals. Visuals like static images, animated images and videos don’t just enhance the appearance of content; they improve its readability.
Visuals serve as references to sections of content. When scanning a page, visitors may check the visuals to determine which sections of content to read. At the same time, visuals serve as stopping points. They give visitors a momentary break from reading. Just remember to add relevant visuals that correspond to the sections of content where they are placed.
Define font sizes with a relative measurement unit.
For font sizes, use a relative measurement unit. Font sizes can be defined with either an absolute or relative measurement unit. Pixels fall under the former category. When you define font sizes with pixels, the text will be displayed in the same pixel size. But the problem with pixels is that it doesn’t take into account screen size.
Some visitors may access a page of content on a desktop computer. Others may access it on a smartphone or tablet. Defining font sizes with an absolute measurement unit like pixels will typically result in oversized text on smartphones and tablet computers. Defining font sizes with a relative measurement unit, on the other hand, allows for scalability on different screen sizes.
While we don’t want to get too in the weeds on the technicalities, website designers should already be familiar with relative measurement units, which consist of em and rem. You can use em for sizing that needs to scale based on the font size of an element other than the HTML. Use rem, on the other hand, for elements that scale depending on a user’s browser font size settings.
When defined with a relative measurement unit, font sizes will scale up or down relative to their parent font sizes. Therefore, relative measurement units can improve readability by ensuring that text is easy to read on all devices.
Embrace contrast.
Contrast, or lack thereof, will affect content readability. Contrast is the degree of visual difference between two or more adjacent elements. If the elements look the same, they’ll have poor contrast. If the elements look very different, they’ll have strong contrast.
Embracing contrast can improve the readability of your website’s content. There should be strong contrast between the text and the background on which it’s published. For strong contrast, use a dark font color for the text and a light color for the background. Black text and a white background is a combination that generates strong contrast.
Use a reading score analysis tool.
If you want a second “opinion” on your website’s readability, I’d recommend using a reading analysis tool. These will give your web pages a score based on certain indicators, which can vary by tool.
One of the most familiar reading score analysis tools is the Yoast SEO plug-in, but only WordPress users can access it. For other platforms, you’ll have to use a different reading score analysis tool like Datayze.
It may not be a direct ranking factor for search engine optimization (SEO), but content readability is important nonetheless. You can’t expect visitors to engage with your website if it features hard-to-read content. Some of the best ways to improve content readability include sticking to a writing style, breaking up content into sections, using visuals, defining font sizes with a relative measurement unit, embracing contrast and using a reading score analysis tool.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
Go to Source
Author: Don Dodds, Forbes Councils Member
