As well as sounding more friendly, plain English makes it easier for people to understand your content if they:
This affects more people than you’d think. For example, 10% of the UK population is dyslexic.
Keep words and sentences short. Use contractions, such as “can’t” instead of “cannot”.
This can be particularly hard for people on the Autistic spectrum to understand (estimated to be 700,000 adults and children in the UK).
For example, an Autistic person can take idioms literally so avoid saying things like “over the moon” or “barrel of laughs”.
Headings make content easier to scan. They help people find content they’re looking for and understand where they are on a page.
They’re also useful for people with visual impairments, who may be using a screen reader.
Good use of headings improves our SEO. This means that search engines like Google rank our content as better and therefore display us higher up their results pages.
Rather than using “Click here”, tell users where a link will take them and make it active. Here are some examples for the call to action, you might use on a primary link like a button:
Examples of links you might use within body copy are:
Tip: Changing the wording on links is an easy A/B test that can have a huge impact. Contact Becky Colley if you’d like to chat about setting up an experiment.
It’s good practice for someone else to read content before it’s published, to look for mistakes but also to check comprehension as someone who isn’t familiar with the subject.
Hemingway App is a quick, free tool you can use to help simplify your writing: http://www.hemingwayapp.com/
Alt text describes an image so that users with screen readers know what they are.
Like headings, they also improve our SEO.
Not sure whether your image needs alt text? Use this flowchart from the University of Minnesota.