{"id":4998,"date":"2018-07-03T18:01:08","date_gmt":"2018-07-03T15:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tubikstudio.com\/?p=4996"},"modified":"2023-07-24T11:35:00","modified_gmt":"2023-07-24T11:35:00","slug":"ux-design-how-to-make-web-interface-scannable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tubikstudio.com\/blog\/ux-design-how-to-make-web-interface-scannable\/","title":{"rendered":"UX Design: How to Make Web Interface Scannable"},"content":{"rendered":"

Day by day we are overwhelmed with massive information flow both offline and online. Due to new technologies and a fast internet connection, people can produce more content than they are physically able to consume. Dealing with numerous websites and apps, users don’t read everything they see word by word – they first scan the page to find out why and how it’s useful for them. So, scannability is one of the essential factors of website usability today. Today’s article explores the phenomenon and gives tips on how to make digital product scannable.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"ux<\/p>\n

What Is Scannability?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Applied to a page or screen, the verb “scan” means to glance at\/over or read hastily. So, scannability is the way to present the content and navigation elements like the layout that can be scanned easily. Interacting with a website, especially the first time, users quickly look through the content to analyze whether it’s what they need. Any piece of the content may become a hook in this process: words, sentences, images, or animations. <\/span><\/p>\n

By the way, this behavior is nothing new: for many decades, people often do the same with a new magazine or newspaper looking through them before they start attentive reading of the articles. What’s more, reading from the screen is much more tiring than on paper, so users are more selective when and where they are ready to bother.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why is that important? About a decade ago Jacob Nielsen<\/a> answered the question “How people read on the Web?” simply: “They don’t. People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences”. Since then it hasn’t changed much: we aren’t ready to invest our time and effort into exploring the website if we aren’t sure it corresponds to our needs. So, if\u00a0an eye has nothing to be caught with at the first minutes of introduction, the risk is high that the user will go away. Whatever is the type of website<\/a>, scannability is one of the significant factors of\u00a0its user-friendly nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

How can you check if the webpage is scannable? Try to look at it as a first-time user and answer two questions:<\/span><\/p>\n

– Does what you see in the first couple of minutes correspond to what target audience expects from this page?<\/span><\/p>\n

– Can you understand what kind of information is on the page for the first minute or two?<\/span><\/p>\n

If you aren’t sure that both answers are positive, perhaps it’s time to think about how to strengthen the website scannability. It’s worth investing <\/span>time because well-scanned pages become much more efficient in the following aspects:<\/span><\/p>\n