What’s the number one activity most performed online? Scanning websites! That is right; no one really reads webpages in their entirety. Rather most people just scan. They scan until they find what they want or get frustrated not finding it. Either way they leave lol.

What matters is if you made a good impression on them. Whether they had a positive experience on your website will determine if they will ever return back to you.

Most web surfers scan because reading continuously is too strenuous. Because they don’t have much time in hands. Because they simply don’t want to!

You can help them by designing your webpages in a simple manner, using a lot of white space to give your visitors’ eyes lots of room to breathe. Make your paragraphs short, clear and concise like this. Use headers and direct attention (bold, underline) when and where necessary.

Your visitors have a tendency to jump straight to the bulk of your webpage and start looking for headlines and clues related to the information they are searching for. Just relate this to your own experience browsing websites and it will all make sense.

As a web designer, once you understand that your visitors are really just scanning, design your content accordingly so they can find what they’re looking for. If you truly know your target visitor, you will have no problem with this step.

This really again boils down to giving your visitor what they want and not what you want right? Think about it, what can you possibly do to make them read what you have to say? Not much, I don’t think. So focus on making scanning webpages easier for them.

• Include the major keyword of your webpage in a bold sentence or a paragraph heading.



• Highlight some of the benefits your visitor might potentially be seeking from your webpage.



• Use bold, italicized and underlined texts sparingly but do use them to attract your visitor’s eyes to important parts of the webpage. Don’t be afraid to use colored text and background highlights in moderation.