In Defense of Skimming in Content Strategy

There's a note at the top of the spreadsheet I use to audit websites — a process by which I list and evaluate all of the existing content at the beginning of content strategy projects:

Don’t rely on skimming to determine the message of a page.

I did not write this note. It’s a relic of the original document — one I’d found on the web when I first dipped my toe into content strategy processes years ago. Despite making many modifications to this spreadsheet over time, I’ve left it there.

Don’t skim. Seems like sound advice.

But is it?

As a content strategist, it’s my job to separate our clients’ content (all their words, images, documents, videos, etc…) into parts, prioritize these parts based on strategic goals, group them into pages, and deliver that plan to our design team to serve as the foundation for a new or redesigned website.

During the audit phase of a project, I evaluate all of the content to answer two primary questions:

• Is it helping the client meet their goals?
• Is it helping the user use the website?

I do this so that my team can make recommendations and design a new site that does both of these things better. That’s why the evaluative part of content strategy is called a Gap Analysis. The gap is the space between your content’s ability to meet your business goals and help your user now, and the potential it has to improve.

The gap is, in other words, your opportunity for growth.

Reading the content on any given page — reading it deeply — is crucial to this process. Hence the note at the top of my spreadsheet. It’s essential that I learn what important pieces of information might be buried in a paragraph that’s too long, or lost on a page that isn’t getting enough traffic, or perhaps — if left unattended — undermine the client’s brand and messaging.

I can’t do this without reading. Really, truly reading.

So why am I having doubts?

Perhaps you’ve already guessed the answer because you’ve heard this familiar battle cry: people don’t read on the web.

In 2013, Chartbeat collaborated with Slate to study how people read articles. Based on the results, Farhad Manjoo, Slate's Tech Columnist, concluded that "we live in an age of skimming."

"Schwartz’s data shows that readers can’t stay focused. The more I type, the more of you tune out. And it’s not just me. It’s not just Slate. It’s everywhere online. When people land on a story, they very rarely make it all the way down the page. A lot of people don’t even make it halfway."

It should be noted that the Chartbeat/Slate study focused solely on articles, which tend to have similar designs across the web (much like the one on this site right now) that are quite text heavy. Still, any good designer will tell you that they take skimming into account no matter what type of page they're designing because they have to plan for the user that isn’t going to dwell. 

It should come as no surprise that the #1 myth on UXmyths is: "people read on the web."

"They usually skim the pages looking for highlighted keywords, meaningful headings, short paragraphs and scannable list. Since they’re in a hurry to find the very piece of information they’re looking for, they’ll skip what’s irrelevant for them."

The Chartbeat/Slate study, as well as numerous studies by the Neilsen Norman Group, including their seminal eye-tracking research that suggests users rarely read more than 20% of a page, support this claim.

Content strategy must take skimming into account, too. 

We can learn more about the content we evaluate by skimming pages first, absorbing their messages as the user would, and then reading deeply for additional details. This method allows us to identify the gap between what the page communicates to the skimmer and what it could potentially communicate if the information were organized better or presented differently.

Doing so quickly identifies key information that the skimmer passes over and allows the content strategist to make stronger recommendations toward mitigating the impact of skimming.

This might involve introducing easily scannable bulleted lists to a page or section breaks with headers that provide additional details and guidance to skimming readers. It could also be the beginning of a process that helps your designer create an entirely new page layout to more successfully meet the needs of skimming users.

Can you do this without skimming first? Yes. Absolutely. You could read a page thoroughly and imagine how it appears to a skimmer. But why would you rely on a simulation when the real thing is so easy to do — if not easier. It takes no time at all to skim. In fact, that's why people do it so much. 

And that's why I’m changing my spreadsheet.

The new tip: Skim first. Read second.