2.) HEADLINE ARTICLE
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Improve the Readability of Your Web Page
By Christine Churchill © 2004

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The importance of web site readability was brought home to me
through personal experience with my aged mother. As a hard core
Internet junkie, I felt compelled to share the wonders of the Web
with her. Unfortunately, her eyesight had diminished and reading
on the Web was an unpleasant experience for her.

I literally became her human page reader and the Internet became
a mother-daughter activity. Sometimes I'd copy and paste the
text of articles into Word and kick up the font size to 16 to
print them out so she could share articles with her senior
friends who didn't have geeky daughters.

Reading on the web can be hard work for anyone, not just the
aged. Eye strain runs rampant in the online crowd. Numerous
studies have shown that reading performance drops dramatically on
the web.

Fortunately, you can do many things to improve your viewer's
reading experience on your site. Here are my favorite readability
guidelines.

1. Use contrasting colors. Text is easiest to read when the
font
text color and the background color are in high contrast. Low
contrast irritates the reader and causes eye fatigue. Viewers
with impaired vision may not be able to read low contrast text at
all.

2. "Chunk up" your copy. That's technical talk for make your
page more scan friendly. Large blocks of dense text intimidate
the reader and causes "information overload." Here are a few
easy ways to break up blocks of text:

** Use bullets and subheadings. They help get the readers
attention and say "Hey you - this is important!" Colored bullets
are an easy way to add color and visual interest to a text heavy
page.

** Subheadings should be brief and convey a summary of the
section.
Too often we're tempted to use clever titles whose meaning is
lost on the reader.

** Keep your paragraphs short. Breaking a long paragraph into
several smaller sections invites the viewer in to read. A little
white space between the paragraphs gives the site a clean look.

** Impatient visitors want to be able to glance at your page and
hit the important points. You can help them by bolding important
points or highlighting the text in a different color to draw
their eye.

** Use columns to control text width. Your goal here is to avoid
running your text all the way across the page. Pick up any
newspaper. Notice how they place the text in columns. The
shorter width makes the text easier to read.

3. Avoid busy backgrounds. Nothing screams "amateur" like a
noisy background that makes your text impossible to read.

4. Less is better. Many sites look like my kitchen table -
always cluttered with things that don't belong there. The more
extraneous items you cram on a web page, the more you confuse and
distract the visitor.

Web sites take on an unprofessional look when you start tacking
on too many items. Challenge every item on the page. Does it
really need to be there? Is it still functional? Can I do
without it?

5. Strive for a clean font style for maximum readability.
Imagine trying to read a web page filled with frilly or fancy
fonts.

Want more font style tips? Keep these principles in mind.

** Plain text is easier to read than italicized text.

** Mixed case is easier to read THAN ALL UPPER CASE. Studies
have
demonstrated that it takes people longer to read upper case than
mixed case. Besides, upper case has become synonymous with
screaming on the web - and I'm sure you don't want to scream at
anyone.

** A san-serif font is easier to read than a serif font. If you
were wondering, serifs are the little marks at the end of
letters. Sans serif fonts do not have serifs. Examples of serif
fonts are Times New Roman and Courier New. Popular sans-serif
fonts are Arial and Verdana.

** Don't use itsy bitsy font sizes. Nothing contributes to
eyestrain faster than tiny font. Ideally it is recommended that
you leave the font size scalable so users can control the size
they want.

6. Make your links look like links. If you just can't bring
yourself to color your links blue (the Internet convention for
links) at least underline them. And don't underline anything
that isn't a link. That faux pas makes readers mad fast.

Embedded links work well and according to a Wichita State
usability study
(http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/3S/links.htm)
they are preferred by readers.

Summary

There are thousands of people just like my mom who have trouble
reading web pages. The U.S. Bureau of the Census and the
National Center for Health Statistics estimate there were 35
million seniors in 2000, that's 12.4 percent of the U.S.
population. By 2007 it is estimated that 16.3 million seniors
will be online. One out of five Americans currently has a
disability and as our population ages that number will soar.

Improving the readability of your site is step one to opening the
door of your business to a growing segment of the population. If
you want to learn more ways to widen the door, check out
http://usability.gov.

As an internet marketing professional, I have companies coming to
me wanting me to find untapped markets to sell their goods. The
answer is sometimes as easy as making your font size bigger!

Christine Churchill is the founder of
http://www.keyrelevance.com/, a full service search engine
marketing firm. She is a frequent speaker at the Search Engine
Strategies conferences and moderator of the Design and Usability
forum at the High Rankings Forum. This article originally
appeared in
http://www.successful-sites.com/newsletter/readability-01-22-04.html.