How to Make Your Designs Scannable (And Why You Should)
If you are a well-established company, the user will know what to expect. You must adhere to established design patterns if you are new to the market, or have a lower profile. A SaaS should look just like a SaaS, while a store should look exactly like a store and a blog should look just like a blogger.
Use a Visual Hierarchy
Visual hierarchies can be used to guide users through content. HTML contains the H1 to H7 heading levels. However, they are not much used. This gives you multiple levels of headings that can be scanned at different rates by different readers.
We know for example that subheadings are not very important if the user reads the entire page from top-to-bottom. However, they are great for drawing the attention of skim readers.
Use Negative Space
Imagine a person standing in front of a crowd. Imagine a person standing in a crowd wearing a red-and-white striped jumper with a red and blue bobble hat. It’s quite distinctive. But they may be difficult to spot if there are many characters around them.
Imagine the same person, dressed in the same way, standing on their own. What time will it take to spot them? It’s not difficult even without the stripy attire.
Use F-Patterns
We can use layouts that cater to this tendency because users scan pages in predictable ways.
F and Z patterns have been known by designers for a while. Because they’ve been around for so many years, they might be self-fulfilling. Users are trained to scan pages in this way. Both patterns work in a similar way to horizontal writing systems, where eyes move from one line to the next.
No matter what the reason, key content placed along these paths increases the chances of getting a user’s attention.
This post was written by Kristian D’An. Kristian is the owner and SEO Specialist at Lux Digital Marketing, a St Pete SEO company. Kristian has been optimizing websites successfully for over 7 years. He has helped his clients achieve the #1 position on Google in several different industries.
