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Web Page Headlines - Keep them Clear and Simple

If a web page doesn’t have a clear, simple headline at the top, it should. A headline is the fastest way to help a new reader find out what the page is about. It’s a clue, it provides direction.

This is especially true if a page can be found through a search engine. When that happens, your page becomes the first page people see on your site. And when people have typed in a search phrase, they have a very clear idea about what it is they are looking for.

It may be that when some search traffic arrives at this internal site page, the reader recognizes he or she is in the wrong place and clicks the back button.

That happens. And it’s no problem for you...there’s no point in trying to hang on to a reader who is clearly in the wrong place.

But what about those fast, busy readers who arrive at one of your internal pages, read your headline and then leave, in the mistaken belief that they are in the wrong place?

Is it their fault for being in too much of a hurry and not reading a few more lines?

No, it’s your fault for not making your heading clear enough.

I used to make this mistake all the time. While preparing to write this article, I took a peek at another article I wrote back in 1999. It was an imaginary case history, looking at the progress of two online stores, both selling antique carpets. One store was super sophisticated. The other was rather clunky, unreliable – but very friendly, personal and informative. I speculated that the second one would do rather well.

The title of the article? “Flying Carpets”. Cute, but useless. Useless, that is, for our speedy visitor. Unfortunately, the title of the article, which was also the heading for the page, meant absolutely nothing until you had read the article.

I might have done better to write a heading something like, “How Web Site Personality can Increase Sales”.

I know, it has none of the charm of the original. But it is a lot more helpful to the reader. And that’s a challenge we have to accept on web sites. Readers come in from all directions, often in a hurry, and we have to use words that will slow them down, arrest them and keep them on the page.

If you are writing a headline for a print magazine, it’s a little different. Your readers will give you a little more time. You can use headlines to tease and intrigue. Not so online.

For better or worse, both the search engines and your prospects are in a frenetic search for relevance. So you need to use your page headlines to let them know they have found what they want.

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