Writing for the user

Content should help the user do what they came to your service or website for. Rather than writing what we want to tell the user, we should be designing content by thinking about what the user needs to do

Every user needs to be able to understand your content. The fact that it makes sense to you doesn’t matter. It’s worth remembering that:

• the average reading age in the UK is 9 years old
• 1 in 10 people have dyslexia
• 15% of the population are neurodiverse
• 5.1 million people in England and Wales do not use English as their first language
• users read just 20-28% of the content on a webpage
• negative emotions like anxiety, hopelessness, shame and boredom reduce a person’s ability to understand what they’re reading

Research shows that expert users also prefer simple language. Even specialists want content that is simple, clear and direct.