Best Practices for a User-Friendly Web Contents

User-friendly web content is able to effectively facilitate the ease of reading web contents by efficient use of colors, typography, spacing and many others. Usable and readable web contents are the result of the collaboration of efforts between the web designers and the website content writers. Here are some of the best practices that content writers should adapt for web contents to be user-friendly and readable.

A study shows that web users have very short attention span so make your article short and direct to the point. A short content enhances readability, so much that it was made as one primary factor that influences reading comprehension. Web content writers should choose to get to the point as possible and cut unnecessary words, use short common words, avoid long paragraphs and sentences and use numbers instead of words to enhance scanning and skimming.

According to an article by web content management expert Gerry McGovern concludes that internet readers view web pages in blocks which he calls “block reading”. This study says that web users tend to see web pages in blocks and go directly to items that seem to match a certain criteria. Content writers can accommodate such patterns by breaking articles to single chunks allowing user to skim down the page, organize thoughts in logical pieces by outlining, use simple and concise heading and use keyword-rich heading to aid skimming.

In the recent usability study by Nielsen, web users tend to skim contents. A web content writer can adjust writing contents by designing and structuring web pages with skimming in mind. Content writers can emphasize a paragraphs main thought by making the first few words count. They can also use the inverted pyramid style of writing, making the important information on top, then followed by the supporting details and the last is the related information.

In an eye-tracking study by ClickTale, web clients focus more on bulleted list than any other part of the content. They help readers to digest information faster because they help break down data into small parts and highlight important keywords and phrases. Content writers can consider breaking paragraphs to list and emphasize information by applying bold and italic fonts.

In a study called “Reading Online Text: A Comparison of Four White Space Layouts,” the researchers discovered that changing the amount of margins of a passage affects reading comprehension and speed. Thus space is very important when you want the reader to understand very carefully your articles. Web content writers can easily implement this by applying right amount of spacing per word and paragraphs.

Using the advantage of hyperlinked text can also benefit the readability of web contents. Web designers needs to apply different styles on visited links by the use of the “:visited” css selector for the readers to know which links are already visited. Using the “title” attribute can help readers to know what to expect when they happen to click a particular link. Both of these tips help the reader to navigate between different links.

Lastly, content writers can use photos, charts and graphs to lure readers and enhance content readability. Another eye-tracking study conducted by Nielsen discovered that users pay more attention to images with relevant information but ignores other images that are not relevant. The study reported a 34% memory retention when irrelevant images are removed. Using these observations, content writers can support text with relevant visual data and remove unimportant images.