Add to favorites Examiner Bio

Target your audience with appropriate verbiage - Keep it simple

Web content, its ads and their placement is very important to the success of your website and the expectation for return visits; which in turn means sales. There are a great number of factors that make a website successful and great many that make them a disaster!

In previous articles, it has been mentioned the way a user scans a website, what makes up good content and where ads should be placed.

Here is another factor that my not have been taken into consideration when you were building your website…

There is a portion of users termed “Lower-Literacy Users.” Now, this is not to say that they are illiterate. However, there is a major difference between a higher-literacy user who can scan a web page with quick glances and a lower-literacy user who has to read the site word for word. They are unable to breeze across a page to find what they’re looking for. For this reason, it gives them a “narrow field of view” according to Jakob Nielsen's study done in 2005. The results proved the following:

Success Rate                     Original Site       Rewritten Site
Lower-literacy users                46%                82%
Higher-literacy users               68%               93%
Total Task Time                Original Site       Rewritten Site
Lower-literacy users               22.3 min.          9.5 min.
Higher-literacy users              14.3 min.          5.1 min.
Satisfaction
(1-5 scale, 5 best)             Original Site       Rewritten Site
Lower-literacy users               3.5                    4.4
Higher-literacy users              3.7                    4.8


With these statistics in mind, when you’re creating your website, take into serious consideration who you are writing to. For example, if you’re selling arts and crafts, you wouldn’t want to write a dissertation on embroidery. The chances are that your visitor is a homemaker who enjoys hobbies, or an elderly person who merely wants to purchase some patterns. On the other hand, if you’re selling high-tech products, your audience will probably enjoy lengthy reports on the equipment and services you have to offer.

Here are a few more statistics to aid you when trying to reach your target audience:

According to the U.S. Department of Education's National Adult Literacy Survey, 48% of the U.S. population has low literacy.

Based on the information found by Jakob Nielsen's study, internet participation at different education levels, he estimated that 30% of Web users have low literacy.

He suggested simplifying the text: use text aimed at a 6th grade reading level on the homepage, important category pages, and landing pages. On other pages, use text geared to an 8th grade reading level.

Keep in mind; 48% of the U.S. population is at a low literacy, as are 30% of total online users.  So, try to keep your writing simple. Targeting your market with the appropriate verbiage will make the most of your content and hold the interest of your visitors.