Many studies of how users read text on the internet has revealed that they do not actually read. Instead many people scan the text – and especially when they are looking for business or company information.

A study of five different writing styles found that a website scored 58% higher in measured usability when it was written concisely, 47% higher when the text was scannable and 27% higher when it was written in an objective style instead of a promotional style.

Combining these three changes into a website that was concise, scannable and objective resulted in 124% higher measured usability.

So think about all of this when you’re writing your next piece of content for your website.

Tips for web writing: Ensure that you write in a simple, clear and straightforward manner. Include lots of sub-heads and straight-talking headlines. Bold up words if they are important. Don’t over-write but don’t under-write either. Research has shown that about 250 words is the optimum per page.

The bottom line is that it is better to employ someone else to write your copy if you are not experienced, as it will pay dividends in the long-term.

Tags: content, copy, usability

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Site Content. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Posted by Leon You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.