When I visit a website, I’m not reading your content. I can probably bet that you’re doing the same thing right now and not reading mine. After years in the industry, I’ve learned many things about website usability among loads of other things. If you’re reading this right now and run a website, you’re in for a real treat.
What’s This Treat, Brad?
After years of formulating content and running a blog, I can direct your eyes to certain points in an article that I feel will give my readers relevant and beneficial knowledge. How is this done? Simply speaking, user’s don’t read… they scan.
The Mentality of the Internet Age
I’ve stated this before (previous article link), that content is created every second, of every day. You can’t beat the rush of new content formed by people like us. So, what can you do to make yourself a writer that internet users will appreciate? Write as if you have 5 seconds to convince your reader to scan a little more into your article.
If you fail to realize that the back button on a browser is used more than any other button, then you are doing yourself a real disservice by writing novel length articles. Short. Concise. To the point. This will attract more readers, referrals, comments to your sites.
Blocks of text do no favours for any reader. If I can’t read what you are trying to say in two or three sentences, I will push back and probably never return again. It’s not you, it’s just the plethora of information available on the web that might summarize it for me, reducing time wasted searching for information.
Well, Jeez! How do you create scannable content?
I’m glad you read that. To create scannable content, here are methods that I employ on my sites:
- Bold your important words. This attracts the eye to words in the sentences.
- Use headings. This gets your content of writing away from being blocks of text and more towards scanner friendly content.
- Pictures, Pictures and More Pictures. If you don’t add pictures to attract interest to your articles, you are losing out.. Big time. With hundreds of millions of pictures available on the internet, you should take advantage of them and put them in your post.
- Lists. Let me tell you something. Scanners LOVE lists. The dots beside the content are screaming, “I’m organized and in a concise format for you to read me in!” and that makes scanners… interested.
- Summarize. Do not make paragraph long bullet points.
We are in a New Age of Publishing
I think the old media (mostly newspaper), are going to be less and less in demand. Why? The new generation is used to getting their information on the internet and the articles in the newspaper aren’t concise. They give all the details, in blocks of text, with little bolding or lists. Which makes us scanners, well, want to push the back button. (I know that’s not possible but I have to try and tie it in).
I could see major problems in the future for the owners of these publishing companies unless they adapt. The New York Times has done an excellent job putting up a paywall and branching out to apps on the iPad and Android market.
Will a Paywall work?
For people that are dedicated to The New York Times for their news, yes. For others that are looking to read about a topic, no. The site states that you can read 20 articles before having to pay for it.
As stated above:
“Content is created every second, of every day. You can’t beat the rush of new content.”
I think they are going to have a real problem in the future as people simply don’t want to pay for content. Where you can pay for it, it’s probably already out there for free.
Brad.. Scanning, New York Times, Internet Age.. Tie all of this together
Sure. If you don’t keep pace with the publishing trend, you’ll have a really hard time growing your site. Growth is good. Growth is money. More Money is fine. Publish high quality content that is easy to read. That is all.
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Image Cred: Eyeball, Newspapers, Easy To Read
18 Comments
I wanted to share your article but your tweet button is not working.
I copied the link and so on, but figured i’d let you know.
Hey Maria!
Sorry about that, apparently TweetMeme isn’t working any more.. I’ve updated the plugin with the official Twitter button.
Thanks for your support!
I remembered Orwell’s book 1984 all the way while reading this article.
I know blogs are not books, and I know the language spoken in blogs is of a different nature of those that we used to see in books, magazines, or other types of long text.
But all this about concise writing, topics, lists, leads me to think that as time passes, human beings are becoming less and less articulated thinkers, readers and writers.
It’s all about attracting people to your “content” – and this word “content” is the most generic, imprecise and misleading word used nowadays.
We put music, text, images, ideas, and even feelings and more abstract concepts in a bucket called “content”. And the content wars are, in my opinion, stating that more and more people and blogs talk about more and more similar stuff that we’re used to see everywhere.
My opinion is, if you have great ideas, original work, stuff that matters and will make history in any sense, you’ll be seen. If you don’t have, well, you can stick to the “content wars” strategies and fireworks to attract people.
BTW I’m using some tips of yours to write my next articles, thanks
Hi Rafael,
Thanks for your well thought out comment.
I can see your point about having various forms of expression “thrown into the bucket” as you say. It really shatters the idea of individualism and unique perceptions on ideas.
However, the aim I was going for in this article was blogs as they are usually text driven. Text can viewed in my opinion as content as that is where the idea of the word came from.
I totally agree with you about having something worthwhile.. If you’re just rehashing other people’s ideas, then what good it doing?
Have a good one!
I was just scanning ( as you have foretold) and I was hook by the picture of the evolution of men and was laughing on how we are currently evolving. You are correct. We only scan and when we see some points that we wanted to read that is the time we read the full article.
Hey Ruby!
Haha, that is actually really funny. I enjoy the fact that my strategies worked!
Hope you learned something about online publishing, all the best.
I really got your point why some visitors aren’t reading content of a website. It is because the content of this page is not attractive to read and the content is not interesting. Thank you for the tips that you’ve shared to us because these would help us attract visitors to read blogs.
I found a big improvement with my blog bounce rate when I added and extra space between my paragraphs. It makes the content a littl easier to read.
Good point about blocks of text scaring users away.
I’m already using lists and pictures, but will try to bold more text to keep users scanning my content… Thanks for sharing your ideas !
Interesting Blog, Congratulations!
With the invention of the internet and digital media, everything has been made instant these days. (With the exception of the DMV of course!) We are so used to instant gratification, especially my 3 teenage boys and their generation. You are right that most people scan because they want the answer they need quickly, and then they move on. The bold print and list ideas are ones that I need to implement as well. Your advice is great for a newcomer like myself, thanks so much!
Brad,
I agree 100% with your article. I can’t tell you how often I get to a page and there is no bold, no bullets, very little white space. It’s like they are trying to force us to read every word instead of extracting the substance.
When I find a page like that, more often than not, I simply move on immediately.
Granted, when I go back to some of my older web pages, I shudder that I wasn’t more attuned to the reader’s need for speed, but at least now I know better.
Thanks for sharing, this post was full of insight and great info. Very cool, great content!
Great Post Brad! Thanks for sharing the useful tips! I especially like the idea of adding pictures to the article being published! It certainly makes the article more appealing to read and a lot of folk are overlooking this. I am loving your blog! Keep up the good work!
if the content is good and it starts with a good sentence then obviously people will read it unless it is autoblogs
Wow that works really well, I never thought that this simple things can make a big impact to the site… thanks for sharing… I’ll go and edit my blogss now.. ^__^
How many words do you think make for a good blog text? I am contemplating series instead of stand alone articles. I do agree with you that readers scan. I had to stop myself more than once from doing the same with your article about scanning
I agree Brad. I am a “scanning type” too. As a visitor I need to see organized content, with headlines, cause sometimes I don’t have the time to read the whole article. So, I try to do the same for my visitors too. I have in mind to put more pictures in my posts, but my concern is to have light pages that open fast. Is it possible to have both?