by Kevin Pointer Sr.
Consumers are exposed daily to all types of web content. From blogs, opinion pieces, business websites and content, essays, and video and audio content – to ebooks, infographics, white papers, case studies, and everything in between, there are companies – big, medium, and small compete for our attention. That does not even count the millions of individuals seeking to engage us. The people and companies behind web content variously inform, persuade, showcase, educate, challenge, sell products and services and more. Although the content is daily and the types of content is consistent, the quality and readability of the content can vary widely. Below are two Craig’s List advertisements for website creation services that demonstrate just how much website content quality and readability can vary.
The above Craigslist ad for website, logo design, and so forth is an example of poor web content. Since Ryan is advertising communication and design services, the reader would expect proficient writing, grammar and punctuation, and samples of his graphic design work. He fails to deliver on those basic expectations. Instead Ryan hurts his ad’s readability by providing one solid blurb consisting of all bold text that sort of feels like two or three run on sentences. His lack of organization and his super casual tone distract from his message. Ryan’s style moves beyond mere informality to the realm of annoyance. All of this as Ryan tries, like the worst stereotype of an aggressive used car salesperson, to convince prospective customers that he is the real deal. Other readability or communication offenses that I noticed that were also listed within a piece entitled the 16 Rules of Blog Writing and Layout included:
- Less than optimum use of bulleted lists (Rule # 4)
- Punctuation error, lack of a comma, in the title of the advert (my observation)
- Use of serif fonts which are generally agreed to be harder for on-screen reading (Rule # 7)
- Border line overuse of ALL CAPITALS which is the online equivalent of BEING SHOUTED AT. (Rule # 10)
- No use if images which, as alluded to earlier, is probably Ryan’s greatest offense (Rule # 13)
Varun’s Craigslist ad for website development above, by contrast, is a good one. This advertiser does not try to overwhelm you with strong words, heavy bolding, and seemingly unbeatable prices where you can literally call or text him anytime during the night or day. Rather, after his headline, Varun very appropriately shows and gives a sense of what he can do then augments that with a much more graceful, lightweight, and spaced listing of his offering and details. Varun’s list of eight “sales” sentences is effective because the reader can relatively easily review and evaluate each sales point. Varun’s use of white space helps his ad’s readability although he could have definitely made the font size larger. He could have also helped his readability and appealed to me more as a reader if he would have bulletized his list of sales sentences and had them reviewed by a competent editor or friend as his list suffers from a lack of parallelism. (grammatical consistency and balance).
In terms of functionality and readability, Varun provides clickable, large and small thumbnails of his website pages that demonstrate his capabilities. Thumbnails solve the readability constraints of small screens.
