Is Your Content Accessible? Try These Readability Tools.

Sometimes, we underestimate the value of readability. When we’re creating content meant to advertise our businesses, it’s easy to forgo accessibility in favor of rhetorical fireworks. Other times, we may not want to focus on accessibility out of fear of offending our audiences.

Working to ensure that advertising copy is easy to understand doesn’t mean dumbing our work down, though. Instead, breaking up sentences and carefully choosing our words means broadening our audience scope.

This is where readability tricks and tools come in handy.

There are deliberate steps you can take while writing copy that’ll make your work more readable. You can also utilize a number of tools to assess your work’s accessibility. Let’s look at these valuable tips and tricks so that your ads can serve your business more effectively.

Think Short

This is one of the areas I have the most trouble with: keeping my paragraphs and sentences short. Readers don’t like long stretches of text. Shorter sentences keep readers’ attention. That said, don’t feel as though your sentences all need to be five words in length or shorter. Spice it up! Varying sentence lengths adds rhythm to your copy. It also allows readers to catch their breath while reading.

Likewise, you’ll want to keep your paragraphs short. Long walls of text are intimidating for even the most dedicated consumer.

Transition with Care

Transition words help with the readability and flow of your copy. If you move from one paragraph to another without these phrases, then readers may feel as though you’re unable to remain on topic.

For example – well, there it is. “For example” is a well-used transitional phrase that guides your readers from one thought to the next. Other phrases include:

• Most importantly
• Because
• Therefore
• Thus
• Also
• Though

While you shouldn’t overuse these terms, sprinkling them throughout your work will make your audience feel as though they’re in conversation with your text. That relatability helps with comprehension and later empathetic connection.

Break up Your Work

You’ll also want to use H2 and H3 headers to break up your paragraphs. As already mentioned, readers are intimidated by walls of text. When you diversify the size of the font you use, you offer their eyes a break. You also give their brains a moment to rest before you move on to your next topic.

Use Your Tools

Once you’ve wrapped up work on a piece, you’ll want to run it through a readability tool to ensure that you’ve done your job. These tools include but are not limited to:

• Searchmetrics Content Experience
• WebFX Readability Tool
• Text Optimizer
• Readability Analyzer

Each tool has a different metric on which it rates the readability of a piece. Keep that metric in mind, and you’ll be able to identify the writing habits that may be making your copy difficult to parse.

The readability of your copy directly impacts its success. If you’re looking to lower your bounce rates, why not try some of the aforementioned tricks and tools?

Conclusion

Is your company in need of help? MV3 Marketing Agency has numerous Marketing experts ready to assist you. Contact MV3 Marketing to jump-start your business.

Image attribution: Chris Titze Imaging – stock.adobe.com