How to edit and format your typography for maximum conversion

Provide eye relief and make readers slide through your copy with ease.

Every page on your site is basically a salesman in print for your product or business. And not only the copy itself but also the formatting need to considered.

  • Don't use periods or full stops in headlines. A full stop brings reading to a stop. Not helpful when you want to get him to read the next paragraph or subheadline.
  • Don't use all CAPITAL LETTERS, they have no ascenders or descenders to help recognise words and tend to be read letter by letter.
  • Use Drop Caps if possible. They increase readership but are kinda hard to pull off on the web (with HTML/CSS).
  • Use one or two high quality fonts. Optimised for your medium (Web/Print).
  • Use a subheadline between your headline and body copy ****(2-3 lines) to explode your headline's meaning, increase attention and interest.
  • Use Bold and Italic to mark important words or sentences. But don't overdo it. Those are meant to provide eye relief and guidance.
  • Use Bullets (numbered or dots and icons) to list features & benefits or other unrelated facts
  • Use parenthesis instead of commas to explode the meaning of your sentence (it works very well)
  • Limit your line length to something like 700 px (on the web). It makes reading the copy much more easy and less tiring.
  • Set a good line height which is related to the width of your content (use a calculator like https://grtcalculator.com) and limit the width of the copy to 700px-800px.
  • Use 3 periods for cliffhangers … or transitions … they help to keep the reader flowing. But again: Don't overdo it.
  • Almost 90% of the time, it’s best to eliminate or replace the word “that”
  • Replace big/complex words with simple/common words
  • Hunt down the instances you’ve used the word “and” and break it into shorter statements
  • Insert transitions
  • Moving on…
  • Anyway,
  • However,
  • Also,
  • Plus,
  • Break up your copy into small paragraphs to make it look less boring and overwhelming

If you follow these rules you make sure that your copy is as easy to read and digest as possible. And thats exactly what we want. Because only when we get people to actually read what we write can we get our message across and sell the sizzle (as I like to call it).

Designed to sell

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Sebastian Scheerer
Imprint / Impressum