Readability and Your Site’s Stickiness

A sticky site compels readers to return often and stick around longer because the content is just what they wanted to read. But that only happens if it is also easy to read.

Readability is a term used to describe the ease of reading. The “ease” part is relative though because it depends on your target readers. Writing at a level that is above or below your readers’ will just hasten their exit, boost your bounce rate and unstick your site.

What writing level should you aim for?

If you write for an academic audience, you will want to write in a high-brow kind of way that is virtually unreadable to the rest of us (and I say that in the nicest possible way). But that is the level of reading ease that will satisfy the academic crowd. The rest of us though will require a slightly easier read.

The bigger your audience is (or you want it to be), the more you need to write to the intermediate readers. If you write about safety, health, or legal issues, you should write to an even more basic level because it is important that everyone has equal access to this type of information.

What may surprise you is what level is considered intermediate reading. International surveys use levels 1 to 5 and do not give grade-level equivalents because that wouldn’t represent the actual skills of adults. However, others have estimated grade levels and say that intermediate works out to about grade 8. The basic level is at about grade 4 or 5. I’m not sure what level the bunny reads at, but the surveys show that over 80% of the human populations of countries such as the United States, Canada and Australia fall in the intermediate level or lower.

What is your writing level?

So how do you know what level you are writing at? There are several readability indexes that will score a piece of writing. Rather than go into the different indexes, I will point you to a few options I have found that will do the calculations for you. The first two are online sites that present you with scores for the different indexes and then give you a grade average.

Note that while you’re using these tools, you can point to a specific web page and have that evaluated, but it looks at the whole page not just the text. I would advise pasting your text directly in to get a more accurate result. It is important to note that these formulas are not totally 100%, but they give a good estimate.

In the screenshots below, you will see the results for the text above.

1. Read Able

2. Added Bytes

3. Microsoft Word: If you have “Show readability statistics” turned on under the “Spelling & Grammar” options in the Tools menu, you will see the scores at the end of a spell check.

What to do now?

These tools measure such things as the number and length of sentences, words, syllables, etc. Test yourself every once in a while to keep on track. If your readers are at the intermediate level and the tests show you are writing above that level, try simplifying. Use shorter sentences and more familiar, less complex words.

But remember that the indexes don’t measure good writing or good content. Readability is only important if you write something people want to read. A sticky site is a well read site.

Have you checked the readability of your posts or articles? Were there any surprises?

Sources:

• The Principles of Readability, by William H. DuBay (pdf document)
• Building on our Competencies: Canadian Results of the International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey (pdf document)
• National Assessment of Adult Literacy (United States)
• Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey, Summary Results, Australia, 2006

Tagged as: readability, sticky sites