Let’s say you have a beautifully designed webpage that’s full of great content (you do, don’t you?). You spent endless hours designing the main page so it’s eye-catching. The navigation is so easy to understand that a five year old could surf your site with no problem. And the content! You are an expert and you think that your page should be the go-to site for your field. But you’re not seeing results. That spells disaster for a business. Have you ever considered that aside from great overall navigation, your content-rich pages themselves are designed poorly?  

Let’s face it—the average web browser’s attention span has greatly reduced. Blame multitasking and text messages. You average visitor is not going to want to read through mega paragraphs of text and sift through your prose to get to the meaning. That’s why you have to take into consideration these design tips for your content-rich pages.

First, take a look at your pages. You must break up your paragraphs into small, bite-size pieces. No one wants to read a huge wall of text—your visitors will get three lines in and then give up. One great way to break up content is with subdivisions or subheadings. Your pages will have a main title and subheadings will help the flow and will keep the reader’s attention. Let’s say your objective with this particular page is to get people to buy your test preparation guide. You subheadings could divide the content into sections like “Why You Need This Guide,”“Our Ultimate Test Taking Tips,” “Reviews from Satisfied Users,” and so on. Use subheadings to drive your point home.

                Along with subheadings, bulleted lists are a great way to organize content. Why? It reduces the extra language down to the basics. You are writing for the online market, not a bestseller. Keep the language simple and to the point. Another design tip is to highlight keywords (but don’t use red—see below). Certain buzzwords will relate to your mission statement and will capture the reader’s interest. Think things like value, trusted, exclusive, and proven. 

                Now that you have polished and broken up the text, look for red flags that make your content look like an advertisement. Even if your goal is to sell a product, certain things can make web browsers immediately suspicious of content, and effectively block out what you have to say. Anything that looks remotely like an advertisement banner should be removed. Even if it is a legitimate image like a company logo—if it’s at the top of the page before the web content, trash it. Other offenders are images with bold words or anything that flashes or is animated. Change anything that is in bold red font. Web browsers have long ago learned to bypass large red font since it is so often abused by peddlers of web scams.

                Smart web design for content-rich pages is all about simplicity. You want your users to first scan the content and be comforted by short paragraphs and interesting subheadings. Next, they will read the easy to understand web content. And if you did your job right, they will read through your other pages and tell their friends!