Scoring with scan readers

You’ve done everything right to get your prospect to your web page, but have you anticipated how they will read it? Your web site is not a book. Nobody starts at page one and reads every word.

Web users typically scan a page first to confirm its relevance to their search—taking in headlines, sub-heads, lists and emphasized content in a matter of seconds. If they’re satisfied that your content meets their interest, they may cherry-pick paragraphs to read or (particularly with long content) they may print the page to read in hard copy.

Writing to serve scan-reading behaviour significantly boosts a page’s chances of capturing your visitor-prospect’s attention and prompting a desired conversion action.

So, how do you score with the scanners?

Summarize at the top of the page
If all your visitor reads is your headline, sub-head and first paragraph, they should understand the main gist and key points of your content—including the value proposition.

Use a proper headline and sub-head structure
Knowing the importance that searchers and search engines place on headlines, it’s baffling to see so much headless content still out there.

Numerous eye-movement studies show that the horizontal stripe of space below the page header and above the body text gets the visitor’s first and most intense interest. Users expect headlines.

So do search engines. A page’s headline is one of the first places an engine looks for relevance to a search inquiry.

Write paragraph headings
For many people, the Web is not a comfortable medium for reading (which is why this stuff is important)—and an unrelieved stack of hefty body-text paragraphs signals “I’m gonna have to work for the info... if it’s here!”

Since the whole idea is to be reader-friendly, combine para headings with typographical emphasis within the body text* to create a scan-read synopsis.

*Bold face suits most content; coloured or hi-lited text are also used. Avoid underlining (confusion with links creates usability “friction”), and italics (most fonts render poorly on-screen).

Use bulleted lists
Web users like lists, and effective web copywriting finds opportunities to use them; for example, a series of feature/benefit quick hits. Why force the prospect to winkle them out of a prose paragraph, when they can scan them out in the open.

• Improve user experience
• Make key points prominent
• Say more with less
• Serve scan readers

Write tight
In serving the scan reader, Web content serves all visitors. Web users want lean, interactive-voice copy, written in language they understand and presented in short paragraphs.

In an earlier post, I wrote Use only the words that matter. That post and the points above provide the site owner and the writer with a user-friendliness measuring stick for Web content.