Readability, by definition, is the state or quality of being readable. You want to keep your readers eyes locked onto your content and lead them through your text, giving them the information you want them to have, in the order you want them to receive it. We achieve this by arranging our text in a way that is pleasing to the eye whether we are skimming through the information quickly or reading the entire article word for word.

Our goal is to create as little friction and confusion as possible.

Here are five simple ways to improve your website’s readability.

Avoid using all capital letters

Using all capital letters in your paragraph text has long been considered SCREAMING IN TYPE. Many people use “all caps” in their paragraph text to add emphasis, but in reality all they add is confusion. The human eye by nature does not like to read through a large amount of writing in “all caps”.

When adding emphasis in a paragraph, try to sparingly using a bold or italic effect instead. Your readers will thank you.

Avoid centering your headlines and paragraphs

Printed posters and flyers occasionally use centered headlines and text, but this is rarely appropriate when writing content for the web. Since we first learned to read, we have all become accustomed to reading text that is aligned to the left. I can’t ever remember reading a book that was formatted differently.

There are rare occasions where other formatting will work, but be careful not to add any confusion to the readers eye, especially in your paragraph text.

Use paragraph breaks

In grade school we were taught to indent the first line of every paragraph. When writing for the web we take this a step further and put a space between paragraphs by using paragraph breaks. This added white space between paragraphs will give your readers eyes a rest and allow them to skim through to the content that interests them faster.

Use consistant and appropriate colors

Using a different color for each of your subheadings may be fun to do, but in most cases you are just confusing your reader.

Is this a new blog post or article? Is this another subheading in the same article?

Making drastic changes to your formatting can be very distracting. It is a good practice to use consistant color, font type, and size for your headlines, subheadings, paragraphs, etc, so your readers will easily flow though your content knowing exactly where they are.

Avoid scrolling sideways

Although books are written with pages facing each other horizontally, we have grown accustomed to scolling downward when reading web sites. If your text is formatted to be wider than the average monitor, you are forcing your reader to scroll sideways, using more mouse movement than is neccesary, and may distract them from whats important - your valuable content.

These are just a handful of the many ways to make your content more readable on the internet. These rules, like all others, are meant to be broken, but only when the design calls for it and it does not cause added difficulty for your reader.

Groundwater conservation districts have the power and duty to manage underground water as defined in chapter 36 of the Texas water code. A prime duty of the department is issuing the licences required for water well drilling and other related projects.

The main challenge with this web site project will be the organization of several documents for the user to download in PDF format. The interface needs to be simple to navigate so that their clients can obtain the proper document in the shortest amount of time and with fast page loads.

Since this project will not be graphically intense, I’m looking forward to this opportunity to stretch out, challenge myself, and focus on my CSS skills to provide them with a elegant web site design.

I’ll be posting the final result in the portfolio section soon in just a few weeks. Check back soon!

UK based oil and gas industry recruiting company, MacDonald Energy, requested my original oil rig photography to be used in the design of their new corporate web site.

MacDonald Energy is the corporate enterprise of Jim MacDonald who is widely known throughout the oil and gas industry. He is respected as one of the most experienced consultant facilitators and has been involved in the consultancy business since 1988.

MacDonald Energy was established as a professional Body Shop with worldwide contacts able to identify the right person for any placement required by clients.

Apache Advertising and Design was pleased to provide photography that fit their marketing needs.

If you work for or know of a deserving non-profit, you can nominate it for the donation. Any registered, non-profit organization with operations based in Oklahoma is eligible to receive the website donation.

After receiving permission from each finalist, Element Fusion will put the finalists and their stories up for a public vote on this website. The public vote will be weighed in along with input from Element Fusion’s selection panel in choosing the final winner.

The final web site will be valued at over $4000 and will certainly help one lucky non-profit organization and their local community. I am inspired by the contest that Element fusion is doing and I am strongly considering a similar give away in my own local community. Stay tuned for updates.

An agreement was made and now my photo has been published on the “quiz” section of their web site. You can view a screen capture of this page by CLICKING HERE.

I’m very pleased that interest in my photography is growing and I hope to see more pieces published in the near future.

“Matt has become a valuable asset to our company by consistently creating high quality graphics, style sheets and ad campaigns for us. Always able to come up with fresh ideas, a very creative thinker.” - Mark Austin

Mark Austin is co-founder of EquineAuctions.com, president of Austin Media and the founder of a non profit recycling organization titled We Can Recycle. Mark is a very busy man and I appreciate him taking the time to write such nice testimonial for me on LinkedIn.

All parties involved were very pleased with the end result, and it looks like more projects are already coming our way. This looks like the beginning of a great relationship with Sam Houston State University and a few other Huntsville area businesses.

On Sunday, July 22, I submitted this poster design iStockPhoto.com to enter their “Designer Spotlight” contest. I was thrilled to see that it was selected and is now on display on their web site. The “Designer Spotlight” features the best designers that use their stock photography products.

She has a few new ideas on the drawing board, so I’ll be posting her new landing pages and ecommerce projects here before long.

UPDATE 10.24.08 - The Rafter K Ranch web site design is now featured on iStockPhoto.com’s Designer Spotlight.

GHQHA needed a very versatile web site that allowed them to add photos, articles, entry forms, and a calendar of events. It is powered by a very easy to use content management system that allowed them to add any content they wished. It was so easy in fact, that they were adding content before I ever had a chance to explain how it worked! They jumped right in and have done a great job with this web site.

The web site project grew to include the King’s other stallions and mares as well, and they chose the domain KingRacingHorses.com to encompass all of their equestrian services.