Jul 16

Written by: PDM Admin
7/16/2008 6:59 AM

Making your web pages more readable is smart. You not only expand your market potential by making your pages more accessible to more people, but many of the techniques that improve usability, make your pages more search engine friendly as well.

Improving your viewer's reading experience on your site is easy if you keep a few things in mind. Here are my favorite readability guidelines.

1. Use contrasting colors. Text is easiest to read when the font text color and the background color are in high contrast. Low contrast irritates the reader and causes eye fatigue. Viewers with impaired vision may not be able to read low contrast text at all.
   
   
   
   
2. "Chunk up" your copy. That's technical talk for make your page more scan-friendly. Large blocks of dense text intimidate the reader and cause "information overload." Look at the two pages below. Which one would you rather read?
   
   
   
   Here are a few easy ways to break up blocks of text:
   • Use bullets and subheadings. They help get the readers attention and say "Hey you - this is important!" Colored bullets are an easy way to add color and visual interest to a text heavy page. Subheadings should be brief and convey a summary of the section. Too often we're tempted to use clever titles whose meaning is lost on the reader.
      
   • Keep your paragraphs short. Breaking a long paragraph into several smaller sections invites the viewer in to read. A little white space between the paragraphs gives the site a clean look.
   • Impatient visitors want to be able to glance at your page and hit the important points. You can help them by bolding important points or highlighting the text in a different color to draw their eye.
   • Use columns to control text width. Your goal here is to avoid running your text all the way across the page. Pick up any newspaper. Notice how they place the text in columns. The shorter width makes the text easier to read.
3. Avoid busy backgrounds. Nothing screams "amateur" like a noisy background that makes your text impossible to read. 
   
   
4. Less is better. Many sites look like my kitchen table - always cluttered with things that don't belong there. The more extraneous items you cram on a web page, the more you confuse and distract the visitor.
   
   Web sites take on an unprofessional look when you start tacking on too many items. From a search engine perspective, too many ideas can dilute the relevancy of your main content. Challenge every item on the page. Does it really need to be there? Is it still functional? Can I do without it?
5. Strive for a clean font style for maximum readability. Imagine trying to read a web page in the decorative style below. Compare that with the sans-serif font below to it.
   
   
   
   Want more font style tips? Keep these principles in mind.
   • Plain text is easier to read than italicized text.
   • Mixed case is easier to read THAN ALL UPPER CASE. Studies have demonstrated that it takes people longer to read upper case than mixed case. Besides, upper case has become synonymous with screaming on the web - and I'm sure you don't want to scream at anyone.
   • A san-serif font is easier to read than a serif font. If you were wondering, serifs are the little marks at the end of letters. Sans serif fonts do not have serifs. Examples of serif fonts are Times New Roman and Courier New. Popular sans-serif fonts are Arial and Verdana.
      
6. Don't use "itsy-bitsy" font sizes. Nothing contributes to eyestrain faster than tiny font! Ideally it is recommended that you leave the font size scalable so users can control the size they want. Also some search engines might flag your site as using a spam technique if you use negative font sizes.
7. Make your links look like links. If you just can't bring yourself to color your links blue (the Internet convention for links) at least underline them. And don't underline anything that isn't a link. That faux pas makes readers mad, fast.

As an Internet marketing professional, I have companies coming to me wanting their website to appeal to their visitors. The answer is sometimes as easy as making your font size bigger!

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