Know the important difference for online writing

A post on Slate recently shared that many visitors of web pages don't scroll at all in order to see all of the content.  So something to keep in mind when you're writing for the web is that you should put your most important stuff up top.  Make it compelling enough that people will want to scroll down to keep reading!

Network For Good echoes this idea, and takes the readability concept further:

"Eye-tracking studies show that readers scan text first to see if the article is relevant to them. They typically skim the top of the page—skipping the parts that require scrolling to reach—plus any headings, images, and bold-faced terms. Effective Web pages are easy to scan quickly and pick out the main points. Put your most important information at the beginning of your article. Expand on that info with eye-grabbing elements like bold-faced subheads, captioned images, and bulleted lists."

The Network For Good article has other good points, like:

• make sure your headline makes it clear what the article is about,
• break up big blocks of text, and 
• use bulleted or numbered lists. 

As ever, our job as communicators is to make it easy on our readers.  Attention spans are even smaller on the internet.  And if your readers don't read, they won't get a chance to be affected by your compelling copy, and then they won't donate!