How can you make your website's content easier to read and understand?

1 Use plain language

Writing in plain language is an effective way to make your content simple, direct, and accessible to your audience. It involves avoiding jargon, technical terms, and vague expressions. Using plain language can help your users locate what they need, comprehend what you offer, and take action. To use plain language successfully, it’s important to know your audience and their goals. Additionally, use short sentences and paragraphs, active voice and personal pronouns, common words instead of acronyms, and headings, lists, and tables to organize your content.

2 Apply readability principles

Readability is a measure of how easy it is to read and comprehend your content, which depends on factors such as font size, line length, contrast, spacing, and alignment. Additionally, readability relates to the level of complexity and familiarity of your content. To ensure your content is readable, you should select a legible and consistent font with a comfortable and adjustable size. Additionally, use high contrast between text and background, as well as white space and margins to create breathing room. Lastly, align text to the left and justify it only if necessary.

3 Follow web writing best practices

Web writing is distinct from print writing since users scan web pages rather than read them in detail. Additionally, users have limited attention spans and multiple distractions. Therefore, web writing demands that writers be concise, clear, and scannable. To adhere to web writing best practices, writers should write for the web instead of print, use headlines, subheadings, and keywords to draw attention, structure their content in an inverted pyramid style to emphasize the most important information first, use short and simple words and sentences, and employ bullet points, numbers, and bold text to emphasize key points.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?