In this article, I will share with you why layout matters on a website.
The layout of your website matters!
Your website’s layout is important for two reasons: it affects how easy your site is to use, and it can impact your search engine rankings.
Making your site easy to use is crucial if you want visitors to stick around. If they can’t find what they’re looking for, or if your site is difficult to navigate, they’ll leave and likely not come back.
Meanwhile, a well-designed website will be rewarded with higher search engine rankings, since search engines favour sites that are user-friendly.
The way people read printed material and websites is different.
The web offers an abundance of information. People are short on time and have little patience. Therefore, scanning content has become the way people engage online.
When we are reading something in print, we generally follow a “z-pattern”. We read the information from left to right. Then skip down a few lines and again read the information from left to right. Like a Z-shape.
However, when we are reading websites, the way we scan content is different.
And here I want to share with you what he has discovered in his research:
First of all, F stands for fast.
Readers scan a website in a few seconds, and they use this F-shape pattern.
To start with, visitors first read in a horizontal movement. They read across the upper part of the content area. And this forms the top bar of the F.
Then, readers move down the page and again read horizontally. This forms the lower part of the F.
Finally, readers scan the left side of the content in a vertical movement. This forms the stem of the F.
In research carried out by Dr. Jakob Nielson, he discovered that people use a pattern that resembles an F-shape.
And how is this information helpful to you?
The takeaways from this research are:
People don’t read through the whole text word-by-word.
People will rarely read every word within your copy. Instead, people SCAN sites. They pick up bits and pieces from your website.
Put the most important information in the first two paragraphs.
You must show the most important information in the first two paragraphs. Here you have the greatest chance that people actually read the information.
Break up your text with headings, sub-headings, bullet points and formatting
Use headings, subheadings, bullet points, and formatting to break up text and guide the reader’s eye.
Make your headings descriptive and informative.
Headings should be informative, creative and engaging with keywords that relate to the post or article.
Create a path for your readers that they can follow.
You need to give the reader signals that guide their eye. Take them on a journey to where you want to take them.
Write in short sentences and paragraphs.
Those are much easier to take in than looking at a wall of text.
Lots of white space around the text is good.
Use plenty of white space around the text. Think of it as breathing space for your text 🙂
