Words matter. Too many words irritate. So do too few. The Goldilocks principle applies as a recent Nielson survey showed. The number of people who read every article word for word is 16 per cent. Most people ‘skip’ words, ‘scan’ and only a few read everything. The rest read the headline and move on.
For web content writers, these figures ought to be an eye-opener, pointing to potentially new ways of writing copy.
We conducted a mini survey of readers of the sites that we write for, and some of their feedback included:
- We want quick answers.
- We don't want to be on a page too long.
- Bad design puts me off.
- Badly written copy or complicated language puts me off.
- We don't like lots of links, image only pages and pages without useful information.
What is our advice? Write for the scanners.