Web Writing for the One-Minute Reader

Fifty-six seconds is the average amount of time a person will spend visiting your website and reading through your copy.  That’s right, less than a minute.  And that’s why your visitor’s reading experience needs to be like breathing fresh, mountain air rather than choking on thick urban smog.

Web readers tend to scan through your information, picking up what they need here and there.  Print readers tend to read more for detail, spending more time and effort digesting sentences.  Your web copy, therefore, requires a different style from writing in print.

Web writers often fall into the trap of telling visitors everything there is to know, especially when writing “About Us” and when providing descriptions of products and services.  But this doesn’t work.  Web visitors are less likely to stare at pages filled with text than at any other feature on the Internet.

What does work?  A few short paragraphs, short, simple sentences and everyday, common words. 

Remember, your visitors may be spending less than a minute on your website, and that’s why you need to engage them with your text.  Following these three simple guidelines can help.

First, write concisely.  Short, well crafted text is easier to understand and to absorb and will enable your visitors to remember the most important information you have to offer.  Too much information is easier to forget.

Second, write everything so it’s relevant to your visitors.  Your company history, for example, may be very impressive.  Your web visitor, however, is not as interested in what you’ve done for yourselves as in what you can do for him or her.  That’s why they’ve come to visit.

Third, write only what’s needed here and now.  Address the most important questions that your visitors will ask and provide contact numbers and e-mail links.  If what you’ve written is exciting and they want more information from you, they’ll ask for it.

In less than a minute, visitors to your website are unlikely to read through detailed information, and much of the clutter filling your web pages will go unread.  So, follow the advice of writer Elmore Leonard: “Leave out the parts that people skip over.”