This is a guest post by Darko Johnson. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest post guidelines.

Did you know that you can improve your visitor’s satisfaction and time they spend on your website by changing the way you write your information? The text below will tell you just that, outlining some of the most important usability discoveries in the last decade in the field of web writing. Ask yourself these 5 questions:

1. Is my text easy to scan?

Users don’t read a lot on the web. There’s been some eye tracking studies to confirm this. As you can see, web users scan more than they read line by line. If you want your visitors to understand and get the point of what you’re saying then, please, make sure your text is easy to scan.

How do I make my text easy to scan?

• H1 and H2 headings. Make them a bigger font size than the ordinary body text. Most people use H1 and H2 headings as subheadings and some use them as list items when compiling a list (like this one.)
• Use bullet points when writing. As you can see, I’m using bullet points now!
• Keep every paragraph short. Some people suggest you include only one idea in a paragraph. I suggest you focus also on quantity. No more than 4 rows per paragraph.

2. Where will I put the most important information?

Users view web pages in a F-Shaped pattern. So the logical conclusion is to put your most important text somewhere in that F-shaped area where users’ eyes fixate.

How do I do this?

• Put the most important information at the beginning in case you write news. In case you write other types of articles, inform the readers what they’re going to get and why should they care. It goes with one old saying by copywriters: “The purpose of the title is to make the reader read the first paragraph. The purpose of the first paragraph is to make the reader read the second one.”

Well, they were right about the first one. With the usability research, however, the second one should be: The purpose of the first paragraph is to make the reader SCAN the rest of the page.

• Put informational words first. One recent example I had: In writing this post on improving English, I could have put “English tools” at the beginning of the URL and also put “5 Language Web Tools” in order to get the visitor’s attention and make him realize the post has to do something on learning languages (which is what he’s probably looking for.)

3. Should I focus on quality or quantity?

Okay, you know what I’m going to say. But what is quality on the web, anyway?
According to many things I’ve read in the usability field, I can define quality as (yeah, this is ‘How do I do this’ part):

• Cut the fluff, focus on facts. Cut the blah-blah text at the beginning (in case you’re worried about putting your target keyword in the introduction, you can do it without the blah, blah text)
• Add multimedia. USEFUL multimedia (pictures, images, etc.) to help people better understand your point. Here’s an excerpt from a research I found:

“Research by Child Development Theorist Linda Kreger Silverman suggests that less than 30% of the population strongly uses visual/spatial thinking, another 45% uses both visual/spatial thinking and thinking in the form of words, and 25% thinks exclusively in words.”

That means that by not adding images and useful visual elements, you’re not fully utilizing and engaging 75% of the population.

I repeat, do not use useless decorating images like most blog posts do. You may want to use it at the introduction as a thumbnail maybe, but that should be it.

4. Do I realize how users look for information online?

Well, you probably don’t, but don’t worry, in the next few paragraphs I’ll explain.

Most of your readers will come from the search engines. They hunt for information and then gather that information in order to complete a specific task (you can read more on this theory if you get the book Killer Web Content from Gerry McGovern).

Often web readers come to your page not really worrying on reading your entire article but a specific part of it that answers their question.

One idea to use this information and make your readers browse more deeply is to add related information as more as possible in your content (don’t overdo it, though.)

One blog does this very well, Techcrunch, especially in a post like this one where in their content they link to other very related resources. You can do this with any type of website. Just don’t like to the same article from a same page more than once and try to link to other pages from above the fold (above the fold = the visible location of the text where users don’t have to scroll).

5. Do I need to cut more text?

Users hate distraction. As we’ve seen, blah-blah text is a distraction your visitors have in order to get the information they need. Same thing with Welcome text. 99% of blogs make this mistake.

For example, let’s say that you, as a web writer, wrote a list on social networks. What would you write at the beginning? Most people will write text outlining how social networks are important and changed our lives and maybe then in the second paragraph touch a bit on giving a brief description on the list and why you should care on reading it. This gives the overall article a major disadvantage.

But you know better now. You’re now equipped with some of the most powerful and current usability principles. I hope you’ll use them to your own advantage.

Darko Johnson is currently writing on Mix The Net, a blog on various online tips for web users.