Why and how to make your website scannable

In today’s episode, we are following up on episode #28, where I gave you my number one copy tip in order to increase the conversions that you’re getting on your website, or even in your email copy. 

I have five additional tips that will help you to increase the clarity in your website copy and, in turn, the conversions you’re getting on your website.

Why you need to have a scannable website (or email)

If you have ever gotten an email or a DM from somebody asking you a question that is answered multiple times in that email you just sent them, or on your website, then today’s tip will help. 

Have you ever been to a restaurant and they rattle off all the specials of the day? Three or four of them in a row? And you kind of sit back and think, “Oh, wow. Okay. I can’t even remember what the first one was now.” So your default is to just skip the specials altogether and choose something off of the menu because it was just too much too fast.

We do this sometimes on our websites. When our websites are not scannable, that is the problem that we’re creating. It’s very difficult. Somebody gets to the end of the page and they can’t even remember what was up at the top and we confuse them. And once again:

A confused mind always says no.

We need to make our websites very scannable because that helps with clarity. When people land on your website, you only have a few seconds to grab their attention. And actually you’re trying to do two things:

1. You’re trying to either grab their attention or
2. You’re trying to repel them.

Both are important. You want people to know immediately, when they land on your website, if it is worth their time to stay.

For some people, it is not worth their time to stay because they are not the person that you can help. You need to be so clear about that message.

5 Tips for making your website more scannable & clear

Tip #1 – Have very descriptive headings and subheadings.

Don’t make these just one word. That’s not good for your visitors or for SEO.  You want to be very, very descriptive.

Tip #2 – Focus on short paragraphs.

In the last episode, we talked about how you take your words and you cut them in half, but you’re still going to have words. I want you to have no more than two to three sentences per paragraph max, four if they’re short sentences. You want to keep your paragraphs short, this lessens the overwhelm.

When that server is rattling off all sorts of specials to you, your brain feels a little overwhelmed and you choose to just avoid. We don’t want people to do that on your website. So you want it to look easy to read. It needs to appear easy on the eyes. So make sure you have short paragraphs.

Tip #3 – You want the sections between headings to be short.

Again, no more than two to three paragraphs per section. This can be very difficult, but make yourself do it. Make yourself think of another heading or subheading that you can use to split that section in half. It will create more clarity and make it easier for people to scan your website.

Tip #4 – Use bold and italics.

But, use them very carefully, very sparingly. You want to make sure that when you bold something, or italicize or underline something, that you are doing so because you truly want to call attention to that one word or phrase. It needs to be something that is very important because your visitor’s eyes will be drawn there. They will read that before they read anything else in the paragraph quite often.

Tip #5 – Use bullet points and numbered lists as often as possible.

Breaking things up, indenting it, put it in a list format. It makes it so much easier for our eyes and our brains to consume, to scan, and to understand.

In summary

You want to make your website very, very scannable because this helps with clarity. And again, clarity is important because a confused mind always says no. So keep things simple. Like we talked about in the last episode, use as few words as possible, cut things in half, and do it again.

If you need to, like I need to, then use these five tips:

1. descriptive headings and subheadings
2. short paragraphs
3. short sections between headings
4. careful use of bold and italics and underlining
5. bullet points, and numbered lists.

If you do these five things in addition to the number one tip I gave you in episode #28, where we talked about cutting your words in half, you will see increased conversions on your website.

Coming Up

Thank you so much for being here with me today. As I mentioned in the last episode, I am truly trying to reach as many women as possible. I believe God wants us online. I believe He needs us and expects us, as women, to stand up and take our rightful place here and spread His goodness and light. Please tell your friends.

One of the best ways that you can help with this is to leave me a review here on the podcast. That will let others know if this is truly going to be beneficial to them or not. And it also lets your favorite podcast app know that this is a podcast that you appreciate so that they will share it with other similar audiences.

In the next episode, I am actually going to be changing up how I do things a bit. I would like to create seasons here on the podcast. And the reason that I am doing this is that I feel like it increases clarity, to be honest. 

You’ll hear me talking about the same topic in my Facebook lives, the same topic on Instagram, the same topic in my emails. Although I will tell you my email subscribers will get tips that I won’t give anywhere else. This is something that I’m really excited about, focusing on one topic at a time so that I can help you on a deeper level.

I still intend for the podcast episodes to be quick and simple. I want them to always be easy to understand and easy to implement for you. But I want to be able to go deeper. And the way I can do that is instead of giving you an hour-long podcast episode, I can break that up into smaller podcast episodes over an entire season. Each episode can build on itself.

The next season is going to be all about monetizing your business. We’re going to talk about the different ways you can monetize, why it’s important for you to monetize if you truly want to have a large influence on people. We’re going to talk about imposter syndrome and how much it actually costs to create a product. Spoiler alert, you can do it for free.

I’m going to give an important call to action, examples, and I’m going to teach you how to stop chasing customers around saying, “Hey, I’ve got this amazing product. You’re going to love it.” We’re going to eliminate that from your business so that you are instead creating products that your customers want to buy and are ready to buy from you.