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People Don’t Read Online—They Scan. This Is How to Write for Them
9 eye-scanning patterns, 10 ways to adapt the text for max readability.
We write texts for different purposes, but there’s one thing we all have in common—we write online.
On the web, things work a little bit awkwardly. You may have already learned from companies’ writing style guides or articles here on Medium that the following factors help retain readers’ attention:
- Keeping paragraphs short
- Combining shorter and longer sentences
- Using bullet points
- Adding relevant illustrations
The problem is, applying writing ‘lifehacks’ blindly is not the way to go.
Doctors learn the structure of the human body before treating it. Writers must learn how human eyes work to get people to devour the content. Let’s look at how people read nowadays to learn how to write for them.
The scientific base of this article
The Nielsen Norman Group, one of the most prominent user experience research companies, has something to say about how people read online. This article is based on their eye-tracking experiment data.
The concept of ‘scanning’
What’s scanning? It’s when people quickly glance through words, phrases, headings, or sections of pages.
People are more likely to scan your digital content and not read it. That’s not your fault. You might be the next Leo Tolstoy writing ‘Anna Karenina 2.0’, but the internet is merciless regarding texts.
NN Group found out that 79% of people constantly scan any new page they come across. Only 16% of people read every word on a page.
Scanning is searching. Reader’s behavior when scanning may seem pure laziness, but it’s not. It’s an efficient strategy to seek out and filter information. Scanning also allows readers to avoid informational overload.
How to tell if you’re scanning?
- The eye fixates on some words but not entire lines of text.
- You are processing content in a non-linear way…
