GrindSmart

With a majority of users that come to your website reading only 80% of your content, it’s imperative that you make sure your content is as usable and visible as possible. What rules are you practicing to make sure that the content on your site contributes to a positive and remarkable user experience? The following tips will allow you to make your content more usable and beneficial to the user.

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Key Material Should Attract Attention

Whatever you want emphasized should posses certain qualities that attract the user. For example, you can make quotes in italic, and vital content in bold. Make sure that if a user is scanning through your content, they’re able to retain as much information as possible without having to read ALL of the content.

Use Sub Headings

Because most people don’t actually read your content rather they scan, you should put sub headings to use. Readers will avidly scan through your content and find information with ease. Dividing larger sections with smaller ones will greatly increase the usability of your content. Mainly due to the users ability to read the headings and determine if the sub text is worth reading or not.

Choose Readable Fonts

What purpose does a font have on your site if it isn’t legible? If a user can read your content, then it is of no value to them. Readable content plays a large role in the quality of the user experience on your site. Make sure you select fonts that are easy on the eyes and mesh well with the overall theme of your website.

Traditional fonts such as Trebuchet MS and Tahoma are the usual choice for text, and Arial/Helvetica are one of the most used fonts for headlines. You can use any font you’d like of course.

Links, Links, and More Links

Hyper links are one of the most important elements that make-up the structure of your content. You should make note that links are best used to direct and further inform users of key and vital information. You should also make sure that you’re not abusing links and going on a link-spree.

Since links are of importance, you have to take the way you style them seriously. You can increase the usability of your links by creating a nice hover effect or changing the fonts weight and more.

Avoid Overwording and Overly Complex Content

When you write for the web, you should always keep in mind that not everyone is either a high-school or college graduate. You need to write for a much lower grade level; preferably the 8th grade. Your content should be concise, easy to read through, scan, and understand.

Overly complicated words will definitely decrease the usability of your website. Also, if you use too many words and don’t divide your content the correct way into sections, you risk the chance of loosing a large portion of your users.

What other tips do you have for writing usable content? And what works best for you and your users?