In web publishing, readability refers to how easy it is for a reader or visitor to understand the content they find on your website. Readability directly impacts how well a potential customer can interact with your content.
Get insight into 8 of the most important things to know about readability from a web publishing perspective.
The goal of web content marketing is to attract and convert readers into customers. The more people who find your content readable and engaging, the more potential for sales.
When a blog, newsletter, or landing page copy is easy to understand and well-organized, users can find what they want and spend more time engaging with your text and learning more about your product or service.
Readability allows greater opportunity for a potential customer to develop a favorable impression of your brand.
Simplicity is a large part of the approach to addressing readability in web publishing.
Making things easier to understand means thinking about your reader first — not how much you want to get onto the page at once. It also means meeting your readers where they are.
They don’t know as much about your product as you do — that’s why they’re reading your blog, article, or product description. They want to learn more.
Overloading the reader and using complicated wording or jargon can drive a wedge between your web content and your potential audience.
To give a reader a good experience interacting with your web content, employ the best practices of writing for readability.
Knowing your audience comes first because, without this knowledge, you can’t gauge how best to position your content (this is also a great time to evaluate search intent).
Criteria like appropriate sentence length and vocabulary are impacted by who you are speaking and selling to.
Example: If your company sells radiography equipment to experienced buyers at large medical organizations, the benchmarks you use for readability will differ from the web content you might use to sell smartwatches to consumers.
Part of readability is making it easy for your reader to connect with your brand by establishing and maintaining standards for presenting your web copy. This is just good copywriting practice for creating high-quality content, but it also serves readability in making it easy for a visitor or reader to know what to expect from your content and how they’ll find what they are looking for.
The format you employ for your articles, for instance, and the layout of your blog not only reflects your brand but also impacts a reader’s interaction with your copy. Other aspects of readability will play into this.
Dense copy is not easy to understand and doesn’t simplify a reader’s experience.
If readers encounter a wall of text, they are more likely to leave (which could impact time on page and bounce rates).
Breaking up content into short, easy-to-scan sections makes it more readable and enjoyable.
When breaking up text into sections, focus each section on one main idea. Preferably, each section should be short, with an average of two to three sentences (although some sections may need to be longer to adequately explain a topic or concept).
Each section should have a clear heading that serves as a signpost to the reader.
If a reader skims through your article or landing page to decide if it has the content they are looking for, they’ll quickly be able to see what you have to offer.
When your content is organized into sections, follow the hierarchy of sizing for subheadings. In an article or on a web page:
Typically, you only need H1 to H3 headings to publish well-organized, clearly written content, although in some cases H4 subheadings may also be used.
The bulk of readability work is done at the sentence level because sentences comprise the bulk of web publishing. It’s where all the explaining happens: in a blog article, on a landing page or through other web content.
The guidelines below help ensure that content is clearly understandable to the average reader.
Written readability of web content only succeeds in reaching a wider audience when working hand-in-hand with visual readability and accessibility standards, such as typography, contrast, imagery, links, and calls to action.
A clear, simple message goes a long way with any good content.
You can still get creative within suggested readability guidelines and express all the highlights and benefits of your company, brand, and product.
The difference is that you can feel confident in knowing your readers can understand your content and that you have created a broader opportunity to connect.
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Learn more about readability in our top readability resources: