Do Not Give Readers Headaches

For at least a decade now every web usability expert has stated that you do not want web site visitors or anyone reading your email newsletters to have to read your content by following the text from one side of the screen to the other. It wears you out after reading a few paragraphs. Yet every day you can find web sites, blogs, newsletters, etc. that force readers to follow from one side of the screen to the other.

The reason you should center your pages is because we're all used to reading 8.5' by 11' pieces of paper. It's easier for our eyes to follow the text from one line to the next. Try this to test the theory. Take a lengthy word document and print two copies of it. One with the orientation as 'portrait' and the other as 'landscape'. Then see if it's easier to read one more than the other and if you can read one more quickly than the other. Newspapers don't publish stories going from one end of the paper to the other, so why would you subject your readers and web visitors to that?

Jakob Nielsen, an expert on web usability, conducted an experiment to test where visitor attention is drawn. Here is a link to the article. Check out the pictures in the article to see where most of us pay attention on web pages.

So please do your visitors and email subscribers a favor and not give them headaches attempting to follow your text.