If you want people to read the text on your website word for word, size does matter. But not in the way you might expect.
Testing has shown that smaller type — typically 12 or 13 pixels or 1.0-1.3em for regular text — actually encourages people to read the individual words because the smaller text requires more focused behavior.
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With one step you can increase readership of your headlines. Here’s how: Stop capitalizing every important word in your title. The publishing industry refers to this as the “Up” style, and its use is popular among traditional publishers, such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
However, research has shown that capitalization actually reduces reading comprehension because it slows down the eye movement and requires the reader take more effort to extract the information.
Readers in general are used to comprehending sentences with natural capitalization – and punctuation for that matter.
The initial caps styling, along with underlining and double spacing after a period, is a relic of bad typewriter design, monospaced typefaces, and limited printing options.
In days of yore, initial caps or even all caps were used to distinguish headlines from the rest of the copy. This is no longer necessary with the advent of bold, italics, and varying font sizes.
So follow the lead of the Associated Press. Ditch the cap-every-word approach. And capitalize only the first word and proper nouns in the headline.
And be sure to end your headline with proper punctuation.
Summary: It’s something most have suspected but couldn’t prove. Now you can. A poorly designed or amateurish-looking website hurts not only a company’s brand image but its sales as well. A Stanford study, based on three years of research that included over 4,500 people, found that 46% of web sales are lost on websites that lack critical elements that build value and trust with visitors. The #1 reason people lose trust in a website: The site’s unprofessional “look and feel.” (more…)
After looking at more than 978 landing pages at the most successful sites, the researchers at Nielsen Norman Group concluded that one or two columns provide the most simplicity and clarity, and consistently delivered the best results. So, landing pages should have only one or two columns – max!
If you’re looking to improve a web page’s performance – its ability to engage, convert, or sell – here’s a simple, though highly effective, bit of advice. Simplicity sells. Simple design. Simple fonts. Simple calls to action. Boring works. And it can make you a lot of money. (more…)
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