Writing for Online Readers: Using Numerals

After conducting eye-tracking studies, Jakob Nielsen discovered how users read various elements of a website. Among the findings, an interesting discovery was the effect numerals had on users’ wandering eyes as they scan through or browse a webpage. Even if they were lost in a pile of words, numerical digits attracted readers’ eyes enough that they stopped scanning and focused their attention of the digits.

Digits tend to be more attractive to readers than words because they tend to represent facts, which readers typically look for when they read on the web. Digits are also a more compact version of representing information, which is preferred over wordy descriptions.

How the effect of digits works is that their shapes stand out significantly among words, especially with a group of digits. This allows one’s peripheral vision to pick up on the uncommon figures before the reader even focuses their vision on it. This enhances the scannability of a page.

Aside from being more attractive to readers, digits also help improve a site and its content’s usability and credibility. E-commerce shoppers, whether they are shopping or just doing research, typically are looking for a particular piece of information or even just the gist of a page. Using digits instead of words to represent numbers significantly improves the usability of the page for shoppers.

Customers often look for specific facts of a product or service, such as products’ size and weight or a service’s cost or specifications. These are all bits of information that are best represented as numerals. Even if users are not scanning for data, presenting facts in a manner that stands out visually enhances credibility of a page with useful information.

The important thing to remember in online writing is that readers are prone to scanning pages and texts. When everything starts looking the same, information tends to get lost in the jumble of words. Therefore, if you have a numerical fact to represent, do so with digits rather than words, you will be sure to grab the reader’s attention.