Creating Usable Content: A Few Tips

This post is a follow-up to my previous post Writing for the Web: A Few Tips, where I focused on more conversational tactics for writing web content. In this post, I want to brief you on a few things you can do to make your web content more usable.

Shorten the Length of Lines
Keep your line length to a manageable minimum. Research has shown that the rate of reading slows and retention rates fall as line length begins to exceed the ideal width of about 12 words per line.^₁ As line length exceeds 12 words, the reader then needs to use the muscles of the eye and neck to track from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line. If the eye must scan great distances on the page, the reader is easily lost and must hunt for the beginning of the next line.

Great use of chunking, imagery, and clean fonts. (example from Pattern Tap)

Break it up!
Chunk your content into meaningful sections. Use section headers to reinforce the user’s understanding of the content. Doing so will provide them cues as to what they are reading. These also improve the ability of the user to scan the page in order to easily pick and choose what sections they may be interested in reading. Chances are your users are bouncing between your site, another site, a handful of social networks, and various other external influences. Providing them clear cues will help them quickly return to where they left off.

Use Images and Photographs...
...but use them wisely. Imagery is one of the most powerful tools in visual design. When choosing or creating images for a page, it's important to use graphics deliberately to support your message and communication goals.

Using images to demonstrate examples of specific ideas increases your site user’s understanding of the content. Thus, satisfaction is improved by helping the user feel that they grasp the ideas.

Imagery also can enhance page hierarchy and scanning by providing visual cues to guide the user throughout the page. Consider the use of a primary focus image with secondary supporting images. The secondary images should support the primary images by helping the eye scan through the page hierarchy. Doing so provides the user with a break from reading content heavy pages.

Use Familiar and Readable Fonts
To achieve the best possible reading speed, use fonts that are familiar and easily scanned. Save unique stylized fonts for headers and features. Use a clean font like Arial or Helvetica for larger amounts of text that requires more dedicated reading time.

These are just a few tips to ensure the best usability for the content on your site. Have any more? Share them in the comments!

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(1) Web Style Guide - Basic Design Principles for Creating Website
Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton