People who visit your website aren’t looking to read a novel. They are impatient, critical and busy. They’ve come to your site to accomplish a task—they want to do or find something. And they won’t tolerate delays or roadblocks—like long pages of text and excessive scrolling.
If you don’t give them what they want immediately, another site will. So when you write for websites, you must minimize impediments between them and their goals. One such impediment: excess words.
Studies show that usability increases up to 58% for concise copy (Morkes and Nielsen, 1997). That means concise, to-the-point writing makes it 58% easier for your readers to fulfill their tasks—whether they’re absorbing information or making a purchase. Here’s how to do it:
Cut it short
Because web readers steer clear of large text blocks, keep your sentences, paragraphs and entire documents to about half the length of their print equivalents. Always trim the fat—you can usually make your point in far fewer words. Pay special attention to redundancies and clichés that add no meaning.
As a guideline, aim for the following:
- Headings: fewer than eight words
- Sentences: fewer than 20 words
- Paragraphs: two to five sentences (and in some cases, just one)
- Pages: fewer than 500 words (the rule of thumb if you’re selling a product: The more expensive it is, the more words you typically need to sell it)
Ideally, aim for even less. Very short sentences, for example, help users grasp meaning more efficiently. You can often put secondary information in another sentence, in a table, or in a link. Or you can leave it out entirely.
One-sentence paragraphs are great.
And it’s perfectly fine to use fragments.
Keep it simple
Reducing word count is just a start. You also want to use simple sentence structures and words. Convoluted writing is even harder to follow online. Flowery prose packed with superfluous phrases just detracts from your core message.
Having trouble? Type your ideas and let the words flow. Then go back and reduce everything to the fewest possible words. Then clarify your meaning by boiling those words down to the simplest available.
Use a thesaurus to reduce complexity, not add to it. Find one word that can replace many. This won’t just simplify your sentences—it will also make your writing more powerful.
Stay focused
Ask yourself, “What key message am I trying to convey?” Once you know your essential point, put it at the start of your page. And don’t deviate from that point.
Online, readers are single-minded and easily distracted. Deliver on your promise, and they’ll stay with you. Stray from your point, and they’re gone in a click.
So keep pages focused on one theme. And keep each paragraph in those pages focused on a single related idea.
Use the active voice
Your English teacher harped about this for a reason. Online, it’s even more important to avoid the passive voice. It not only weakens your copy, but it also forces long, convoluted sentences.
For example, “The dog followed John home” is shorter and more readable than the passive “John was followed home by the dog.” Make sure you emphasize the “doer” of the action rather than the object.
When you write in the active voice, your sentences won’t just be sharper—they’ll also be shorter. (Advanced writers may find exceptions. For example, starting sentences with the object to catch a reader’s eye. But mostly, active voice rules online.)
Once you’ve mastered writing concise, you can learn other tricks for engaging impatient web readers, like writing to scan.