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Tip #1: Don't overuse one-line paragraphs
Are you using one-line paragraphs on your website?
Ah, these trendy one-liners!
The breeze of fresh air.
The cool pack for the eye.
In your face, every teacher of English language out there!
I say let’s write in one-line paragraphs only.
Just kidding, of course.
Let’s not.
Here’s why.
To keep your visitors reading, you need to make sure they don't get visually bored. And after poor readability, visual monotony is your arch enemy #2.
The original purpose of the one-line paragraphs is to bring novelty into the reading experience and to break monotony of the longer paragraphs.
But guess what happens if you use 3+ one-liners after each other? Right, it stops being new and becomes monotonous again.
To make people read more of your content, don’t use too many consecutive one-liners.
Instead, vary the length of your paragraphs between 4-, 3-, 2- and one-liners to break the visual monotony.
Want to know what else can go wrong while formatting your text? Check out this article that has won "The Most Sarcastic Yet Useful Post of the Year" imaginary award in 2018 🏆.
Tip #2: Why you shouldn’t welcome your visitors on your website
"Welcome to my website! I’m happy that you stopped by!"
Phew. Glad we clarified that because your visitors were already starting to think you really don’t want them there.
Jokes aside, the time people are willing to spend on your website is limited.
Not only may they get bored with irrelevant info or jargon (things you can control),
...but they may get interrupted by a phone call, a train stop where they need to get out, or a kid asking for a snack (things you can’t control aka "life").
That’s why you need to make every second count.
Everything on your website – every word, every button, every image – needs to have a purpose.
This purpose can be different: To entertain, to inform, to spark an emotion, to prompt an action, etc. But if you have elements and text with no purpose, you are wasting people’s time and your money.
It’s especially true for meaningless text, such as:
(A) Things that are implied, like "Welcome to my website", "I invite you to look around", etc.
Want your visitors to feel welcome? Value their time and offer them relevant information right away.
Want to invite them to look around? Make it easy to browse your website and use clear navigation.
(B) Things that don’t mean anything concrete.
Your visitors can’t imagine anything concrete when they read things like "high-impact solution", "results driven" or "digital space".
Want to inform? Use words that are specific enough to create a clear picture in your visitors’ minds.
Tip #3: How NOT to display steps, phases and processes
(This tip has been brought to you by a SaaS homepage I reviewed last week.)
Want to make it easier for your future users to understand how to use your new online tool?
Trying to explain to your prospects the phases of your training?
Make sure you display the steps and phases as visually related.
❌ Don't display them in large separate sections visually too far from each other.
Those could be mistaken for your regular content sections, and your prospects may not even recognize these are connected steps of a process.
✔️ Display them closer to each other within the same section of the same background.
✔️ To strengthen the visual connection, use numbers or arrows.
✔️ If you don't have much to say about each step / phase, consider displaying them horizontally from left to right to achieve an even closer visual relation.
Why does this make sense?
Because of the Law of Proximity - a design principle of organization that tells us that the things presented as visually related are perceived as logically related.
Which also means that visually unrelated stuff is going to be perceived as unrelated, which will cause friction in the user experience of your visitors.
Be careful where you place your CTAs.
In most of the cases, a CTA is better placed after the explanation of the last step / phase, as now your prospects have enough info and context to justify an action.
Otherwise, you're risking a "curiosity click" that wastes valuable time and attention but doesn't result in a conversion because your visitors don't have enough info yet.
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