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Journal · The Clarity Series · Content

Why nobody reads your website.

By Nicholas Cabel The 60-second version lives on Instagram

Nobody reads your homepage word for word. Visitors scan it for three things: headings, bold words, and short lines. They skip the rest.

In plain English

Your website is a road sign read at highway speed, not a novel read by a fireplace. Write for the glance, not the study session.

Three habits fix this

01

Add headings every few lines

A scanning eye needs landing spots, and headings are exactly that.

02

Bold the words worth remembering

Highlight the one phrase you want to survive a five-second skim.

03

Keep one idea per block

A paragraph juggling three points loses the reader on the second one.

Worth remembering

NN/g found visitors read about 20% of an average page's words.

That means four out of every five words you write are likely invisible to most visitors. The words that do get read need to be the ones carrying the actual message.

What to do about it

If your homepage is a wall of paragraphs, most of it is going unread right now. Get a free website audit and I will show you where to break it up.

About the author

  • Nicholas Cabel

    Written by

    Nicholas Cabel

    Founder of MakeAndUpdate, a one-person web studio in West Chester, PA. Hand-codes fast websites for local businesses and builds in public.

    @makeandupdate