In addition to direct transactions like online banking, the behavior of user with respect to the Internet is often found absurd. After visiting a website for information, a user hardly reads anything during the average time of visiting a website. This is amply proved by numerous researches that were conducted over the years.
Recent studies on reading of Zoom Web media Reviews have proved the finding to be true. It is found that on average page view duration, users could get to read at most 28% of the total words on a single page. These findings have highlighted the importance of putting maximum information into the first two words of links and headlines. This is also the basis of web-writing guidelines where the focus is on putting keywords that are concise and frontloading. However, people still keep reading more than this bare minimum.
When People Read
It is found that users hardly look at too many information on a given page. It is important to have a well-structured page that must have a clear headline and which clearly informs about the kind of information the writing is all about. The reader focuses their attention on their interested piece of information while ignoring the rest. It is also found that people read on websites because of two important usability goals that the site meets. These are:
Good Information Architecture (IA): having clear navigation that helps users to get to their page easily and which is relevant to their interests. If a user gets stuck by confusing navigation that is slow or misleading, the interest is lost, not to mention the motivation to go ahead with further reading once they arrive at the page they are looking for. In addition, the page should have clear signpost, along with good heading and other elements of design to make the page livelier.
Good Page Layout: with this approach, the user is guided to the relevant section on the page quickly. This requires using good subheads that summarize the information being put up in the section.
In a writing of four paragraphs, it is found that a user gave good attention to the first three paragraphs, while a mere 32% of users actually looked at the last paragraph.
The same trend is visible when user views a search engine results page (SERP). It is well-proved that the first SERP gets the most clicks with the later pages hardly being visited by the users. Similar to reading of body text, the interests of readers fall quickly on SERPs.
Include Good IA and Layout with Good Writing
As already stated the effective way to get users interests and to read your writing is helpful IA and correct page layout. However it is also seen that high quality writing is yet another important ingredient in changing users’ interests from just browsers to intent readers. Undoubtedly, by following the three guidelines, you can really help your content to be called above average.
However, to be called good web content, it is not a mere excellent prose writing that one should be focused about. For digital content to become quality writing, it is also necessary to write clear headlines and other elements that will provide writers with enough time to focus their attention to more important information that they are actually looking for in the text.