The majority of people that land on your website, won’t read it. In fact, they won’t pay that much attention to the text at all, unless they are looking for a key piece of information. And if they are, they will probably just skim through the content until they find what they need. Websites that make it difficult for users to navigate, or find information, will not perform very well at all. In fact, this is something that has a dramatic impact on the user experience provided by your website. As a result, designing your website for skim readers is essential. And here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester, we can help with that. We are Manchester’s leading web design experts, and we provide, high quality, effective, web design solutions. We work with a range of local companies and businesses across Manchester, and the surrounding area, including Wigan and Southport. And this is our guide to the importance of web design for readability.
Making changes to web design for skim reading
Designing your website for people to easily skim read through is all about designing for readability. And while the content itself plays a part in this, as it will need to be concise, original, and relevant, it’s actually the design of the website that can influence how easy the text is to read. You should consider:
- The colour scheme
- The size of the text
- Headings
- The whitespace
- The balance between text and visual features
The colour scheme
The colours used on your website should be determined by the colours of your company branding. But when choosing a colour for the text, you will need to consider the contrast. The text needs to contrast with the background, so that the writing is easy to read, from a glance.
The size of the text
The text needs to be the right size for the screen size of the device. This is essential for skim reading, as text that is too big will slow the user down and take up more time. While text that is too small, will be too difficult to read. Either way, your website users are likely to leave, if the text size is not suitable.
Headings
When skim reading through your content, headings will be incredibly important. These act as anchor points for the user, attracting their attention and indicating what the next pieces of text will be discussing. For people skim reading for specific information, this is a huge time saver.
The whitespace
White space around text pieces make them easier to read, and easier to see. You should experiment with the whitespace between words, letters, lines and paragraphs to find a balance that suits your website, on any device.
The balance between text and visual features
Balancing your text pieces with relevant, associated imagery can help to make your website more visual, and easier to find key information for. Your website visitors will be drawn towards imagery, especially when looking for specific information, so make sure you match your images with the right textual content.
For more information about web design and navigation, get in touch with the experts today, here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester. Manchester’s leading web design experts.