Scannable content

Also increases understanding, satisfaction

The more words on a web page, the longer visitors will stay.

Scannable content — What if you could keep users on a web page for half the time, yet have them understand more, remember it longer and enjoy it better?

But is that really the best metric to measure? What if you could engage users on a page for half the time, yet have them remember one-third more of the content?

That’s what happened in a 2005 usability study by Jakob Nielsen and Kara Pernice Coyne.

Simplify layout to improve readability.

For the study, researchers tested the original version of a story about New York City restaurants. Then they revised it to:

Increase white space
Condense the main idea
Remove unnecessary images
Reduce column widths
Add a graphic for each restaurant ranking

The result: Visitors spent about twice as much time with the original page. But they remembered 34% more of the content on the revised page.

Web page white space before and after — **Breathing space** The web page on the left engaged visitors for twice as much time, but the one on the right increased recall by 34%. *Image from How People Read on the Web: The Eyetracking Evidence*

This study is another argument against using web analytics alone to determine success. If your visitors spend more time on your web page, have you succeeded? Or are you just wasting their time?

Tight writing increases understanding.

Nielsen and Coyne also ran a similar test on more complicated content — a story from The New York Times about Australians who received the Nobel Prize.

By tightening the copy and adding bullets and subheads, the researchers increased comprehension by 12% and increased satisfaction.

Bottom line: Make your copy easier to scan online.

Lift Ideas Off the Screen
Web visitors read, on average, 20% of the words on the page. But which words — and how can you put your messages there?
Would you like to learn which words they’re reading, and how to put your key messages where their eyes are?
If so, please join me at Reach Readers Online — an online web-writing workshop on Oct. 5 - Nov. 2.
In this mobile web-writing workshop, you’ll make sure even flippers and skimmers can get the gist of your message — without reading the paragraphs.
Save $100 when you book by Aug. 15.