DMN3 Blog

If you write copy for the Internet, you must understand how users read on the Web. Otherwise you may be wasting your time…

Print & Web Copy Are Different: When it comes to writing marketing copy, do you think that print and Internet channels are the same? After all, in both instances the potential customer is reading words on a page, be it printed or a web page. While there are similarities, there are also major differences between the two mediums. Ignore these differences and you will end up being much less successful in achieving your digital marketing objectives.

In coming posts, I will spend a lot of time on how you can write effective web copy. Remember as we go that it is not about us, but about the customer we have targeted with our copy.

How Internet Users Read on the Web

If we want to engage visitors and lead them to take our “most favored actions,” then we must understand their behaviors and drivers. One of these behaviors is how they read on the web.

A simple answer is that online browsers don’t read web site copy…or at least not at first. Today’s Internet user has become very adept at scanning new pages for the information they seek. In most cases they are looking for something of benefit to them.

Various usability research studies have concluded that users only spend enough time on a web page to read only a small portion of the words on the web page. Most experts put the actual number around 20 to 30 percent. Eye tracking studies have also shown that visitors do not read web pages. Since as far back as 1997, we know that…

Scanning of web pages is an extremely common behavior

Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D. is responsible for a great body of work on usability issues. He has been involved in the research on web reading, and the graphics (below) shown in this post are from his research. To learn more about him and his work, I recommend you go to his website: www.useit.com

Heatmaps from user eyetracking studies of three websites. The areas where users looked the most are colored red; the yellow areas indicate fewer views, followed by the least-viewed blue areas. Gray areas didn't attract any fixations.(from Nielsen, Jakob, F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content, Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, April 17, 2006)

Think about how you approach viewing a web page for the first time. If you are like the rest of us, you…

• Have a short attention span
• Are impatient
• Are always poised for the next click
• Are always looking for the big payoff
• Don’t really read what's on the screen
• SCAN the page

The visitor controls the mouse and they are looking to move on if they don’t quickly see benefits to staying longer.

If you want to engage visitors, then your copy and design should recognize the fact that they will scan the page. Of course highly motivated visitors will spend more time on the site and will read more of the words on the page.

We typically design sites for the less motivated user who is still looking for a site or an organization to meet his or her needs and desires. For these users we must use text and design elements, e.g., Calls to Action, that are easily scanned.

We also need to incorporate in our design what we know about how users scan the site, i.e. eye path.  Doing both will do a lot to get our message across to the less motivated visitor.

Lower-Literacy Users are Different: It should be noted that these studies deal with higher-literacy users. Internet users who have difficulty reading will interact very differently with a webpage. These lower-literacy users don’t scan because they have difficulty understanding words at a glance. They must read word for word to understand their meaning. If your product or service targets a market made up of a large number of lower-literacy people, then you will want to structure the website and copy for them.

In a future post, I will address some simple steps you can take to make your site and web copy easier for visitors to scan.  Taking steps to improve web page usability will actually improve your message reach to your intended audience.