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How to make articles scannable , and how I’m getting it so wrong

Posted on March 18th, 2008.

Time’s precious and online, it’s even more so. There are so many websites fighting for our attention, and as a result we tend to spend only a short amount of time on each one.

Nobody looks at an entire website from start to finish. Instead, we look at a site’s menu and choose to look at pages which interest us. In other words, we scan the website’s content.

This process of scanning not only applies to entire websites, but also to individual pages and articles within a website.

People don’t want to read entire article, it takes too much time. Instead, they choose what they want to read. They use visual aids (see later) to help them select the content which interests them. This provides us bloggers and copywriters with an opportunity to improve the usability of our content.

How I’m getting it so badly wrong

For the last while, I’ve attempted to make my articles scannable, but lately, I’ve been scrutinising my method.

I remember reading an article on Problogger telling me to use bold and italic text to make important parts of articles stand out and that’s what I’ve done in previous posts. Just look at the article prior to this one. It’s full of bolded text, and that’s where the problem lies.

There’s something in bold in nearly every sentence. Thus by making every sentence standout, I’ve made nothing stand out.

How do other bloggers make their content scannable

I decided to look at how a few other blogs in Technorati’s top 100 did it. The four blogs I choose were Copyblogger.com, Problogger.net, JohnChow.com and Techcrunch.com and here’s what I found (notice the nice scannable list).

• Each blog used subheadings, especially Copyblogger.
• Only Problogger seemed to use bold and italic text, and was incredibly selective in which text it highlighted.
• John Chow and Techcrunch used images. I counted the number of images in 4 of Techcrunch’s posts, and found there to be an average of about 6 images per post!
• All of the blogs used lists.

I learnt an awful lot from looking at other, more successful blogs. Firstly, there was little use of bold and italic text, which means my current method of making posts scannable has to go out the window. Lastly, they all used subheadings, which is something I’m going to have to implement.

Four methods to make articles scannable

Below I’ve listed 4 methods which can help make your writing a little bit easier to read. These methods will help your readers find the parts of your article which they want to read.

1. Split longs posts up into subsections and have each section preceded by a subheading. This allows readers to choose exactly what they want to read about. For example, if a visitor just wanted to know how to make their content scannable, they could go straight to the above subtitle “Four methods to make posts scannable.”

2. Use images to draw attention to important pieces of text or too explain important bits even further. A picture is worth one thousand words, so use them effectively and make them relevant.

3. Use lists. A list sets things out in a clear and easy to read way.

4. Finally, I’m still going to recommend the use of bold and italic text. However, I’m going to stress the importance of only highlighting things which are actually important. Don’t be like me, and highlight a word in every sentence, it just defeats the purpose. No sentence will stand out if they all stand out. Be incredibly selective.

By making your writing scannable, you’ll improve the usability of your content and its usefulness. If visitors are able to find exactly what they’re looking for in your article, without having to read the stuff they don’t want to, they’re going to keep coming back for more.

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