Make your content more readable

by on August 25, 2015

Readable contentWhen you’re putting together online content for your business, especially with your website, you want it to engage, inform, educate and stimulate interest. Making your content reader friendly and easy to digest is an important way to ensure that your content does what it is meant to. You don’t want to create unnecessary roadblocks by making your content difficult to process and access. The experience of your reader is very important!

So how can you make your content more readable and more effective? Here are my top tips for readable content…

Break it up

One of the hardest things for a reader is to be faced with a large, overwhelming chunk of text. Many people won’t bother to try to make sense of it. When people come to websites, they read content quickly and scan it looking for pertinent information. Breaking up your content is crucial!

Use headings to break up long pieces of text and make it easy for readers to understand what specific sections are about.

Also, favour smaller paragraphs over longer ones to again help supply a visual break.

Embrace formatting

A few simple formatting elements in a piece of text can really help to make it more easily readable. One of my favourite ways to do this is with bullet points. You can also use bolding and other types of formatting to highlight important words or information, again facilitating how easy your content is to scan.

Organize your content

It’s also important that you have your content clearly organized and your reader understands what information is where. Look for longer pages on your website and see if perhaps it might make sense to break things out into several pages. Scrutinize your website navigation – is it crystal clear what someone would find on the page? And do they find it when they get there – are you meeting their expectations?

Use a conversational tone

I do a lot of copywriting and I always recommend and prefer a conversational tone in content, speaking directly to the reader as though they were right in front of you. Language that is too technical, too convoluted, trying too hard to be professional can often stop a reader right in their tracks. A conversational tone on the other hand flows better and is easier to skim through and read.

Inject visuals

Graphics, images, and other visual elements act in a similar way as formatting – they help to break up your content and make it more visually appealing. Which encourages further reading. A section of text is less daunting when paired with visuals. Images and icons can also help to communicate what the content is about. And other design related elements like different colours, boxes, fonts, sections etc… also work to make your content easier to absorb.

The above are some of the things I do when I’m putting together content and copywriting. On to you – do you have any other tips to share for helping to make your content shine? Meet you in the comments.

Know that you need a great content, but hate writing? Or are you struggling to put it all into words? I can help! Writing content is one of my favourite things. Let’s work together to create copy that really gets your ideal customer revved and ready to go. Get in touch with me to find out more.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net: Photokanok

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