Improve the Visual Impact of Your Email, Blog, and Website

Your emails, blog and website have the potential to engage readers or turn them off.

How can you design your content so that people keep reading and look forward to hearing from you?

You’re creating a composition not only with your art, but also with words and design elements.

It’s an empty wall on which you showcase your work. Let me emphasize that: The focus should be on your art, not on a decorative font, logo, or the colors you choose.

Every decision you make when creating online content should be about elevating the art.

Having said that, you can elevate the art and retain readers’ interest with these tips.

Images Make An Impact

You are so lucky. You sell something that is visually interesting to look at. This is a big plus in today’s world of online marketing because images have become paramount.

Exploit this advantage!

Use big, beautiful images of your art in your emails, blog posts, and Web pages. Notice I used the word “big.” Tiny images rarely make an impact or encourage interest.

Take up at least 75% of the width of your column with your images unless the image is extremely vertical. Vertical images can be narrower.

Readers will be compelled to scroll when they see glimpses of more images.

Note: Image captions are often read before or instead of other text. Don’t forget the credit lines and perhaps an opportunity to add colorful descriptions to image captions.

Subheadings Divide Your Text

H2 or H3 heading tags (used to code the purple underlined words above) divide up your text on a website or blog post. Think of them as section headings in an outline.

Subheadings tell search engines what’s important on a Web page.

In an email, subheadings differentiate one piece of content from the next.

Once you customize the formatting for H3 (Heading 3) tags on a WordPress site, it’s easy to add subheadings to your text.

All you have to do is highlight the text and assign the formatting:

Short Paragraphs Rule

Forget about the rules for your high-school English papers and embrace the white space on your screen!

Short paragraphs break up dense text, making it easier for people to digest each thought and skip to what is of interest to them.

Aim for paragraphs that are only one or two sentences. Really! It may seem strange to write such short paragraphs if you’ve never done it before, but it’s a whole new world online.

Lists Categorize Your Thoughts

Vertical lists with numbers or bullet points:

• Group major points together.
• Make your text easy to scan.

It’s hard to pick out important points that are separated only by commas within a crowded paragraph.

Bold Attracts Attention

Use bold text to emphasize what you don’t want people to miss.

And … use it sparingly. If everything looks important, then nothing looks important.

Indented text in a different font, color, or background color also adds variety to the monotony of text.

Your Turn

What have I forgotten?

Feel free to share a blog post link from you or anyone else that you think has especially strong visual appeal. And tell us why.