Getting your message across
Posted On: 2011-04-07
Communication is not something that most of us spend a lot of time thinking about ... it's just something we do. In fact it's something that just about every human on the planet does in one way or another.
For many the easiest form of communication is speech. When you talk to another person you communicate and most people do quite a good job of getting their message across when they speak. Sure ... there is always the possibility of misunderstanding what is being said but by and large when we speak we do get the message across to the person or persons who are listening to us.
Of course when we speak ... if it's in a face-to-face situation ... we use more than just our words to convey the meaning of what we're saying. We often use hand gestures to emphasis the important points of what we are saying and there are some people who would really have real trouble communicating if they had to keep their hands still.
There's also body language ... that subtle language that conveys so much and is so hard to hide. Body language can often tell an entirely different story to the words you're using and it can convey a message that you really don't want people to hear.
And then there's the form of communication that we webmasters use ... words and images ... and that's where communication ... getting your message across can get very complicated.
The problem
When you're talking to someone they usually want to stop and listen but when you you're trying to communicate with someone via a web page people aren't so willing to stop and ‘listen' unless you have convinced them that it's worth their while to do so.
Even if they do stop to read what you've written on a web page you may still not get your message across unless you have taken the time and the care to ensure that what you've written is clear ... concise ... engaging and set out in a way that's easy to read and not going to make them feel uncomfortable.
How do the words that you've written on a web page make someone feel uncomfortable? Obviously if those words are going to challenge the reader then the reader may feel uncomfortable ... but it's still quite possible to make someone feel uncomfortable in a quite different way.
To see how that works open up a word document and write a line or so of words that are nothing more than the names of various colors. Once you've done that change the font color of the first word to the color that matches the word so that if the first word you entered was ‘red' then change the color of the font to red.
Now go to the second word and change the font color for that word but use a different color to what the word describes. Do the same for all the other words but make sure that only one or two of the font colors actually match the color the word describes.
Then go back and read that line of text and see how easy it is to read the words that have the corresponding font colors and how less easy it is to read the words that have font colors that don't correspond to the color the word is describing. The meaning of the word doesn't correspond with what a person is seeing.
The same effect applies to the size of the text you use on your web pages. If you have important text on your page then make sure that text stands out from all the other words. You want people to be able to be able to differentiate between what is important and what is not so important and you want them to be able to do it quickly.
The longer they have to spend deciding on what's important and what's not important the less chance you have of getting your message across.
The solution
The headline ... the first line of text on your web page ... is always going to be important so it should be in a large font size and to make things really easy for the person who is looking at your page no other line of text on the page should be quite that large.
Obviously you do want to make your marketing message stand out so if your advertising is separate to the text that's on the page then the font size you use for that marketing text needs to be quite large too.
As you move further down the page you can emphasis important text by increasing the font size ... but not making it bigger than the headline ... and make sure that it's not buried in the paragraphs of less important text.
Use headings to emphasis what is important because that's what people expect to see. Increasing the font size of a line of text that's buried in the middle of a paragraph is only going to make the reader feel uncomfortable and interrupt the communication between you and the reader.
If you want to draw attention to some important point by making it bold ... or even using all capitals ... then by all means do so but don't ever be tempted to make that bold or capitalized text slightly smaller than what's around it just so it will fit in.
When you do that you're interrupting the communication flow again because the reader is seeing your message and then he's seeing something that's both bold and smaller ... subconsciously he or she is left wondering whether it's important because it's bold or not so important because the font size is smaller.
Instead of hearing your message loud and clear readers are left with mixed messages and when that happens you've lost your chance to make a sale.
So when you want to communicate via a web page it's not only the words that you use that are important. If you want to get your message across how you lay those words out on the page is very important too.