UX Tips for Content Marketers: How to Keep Readers on the Page
Sometimes, content doesn’t land the way it should—and it’s not because the writing is bad.
If the experience of reading your content is difficult, it won’t connect.
There are plenty of myths about how people read on the internet:
“Nobody reads anymore.” (People do read. They scan first—but if they find what they need, they’ll read deeply.)
“Shorter is always better.” (Not quite. Clarity is better. If content is useful, well-structured, and easy to follow, people will stay with long-form content.)
“Nobody scrolls.” (In reality? Everybody scrolls.)
The truth is: your content doesn’t need to be shorter. It needs to be easier to read.
If content is frustrating to read, people will check out fast. That’s where UX becomes your secret content superpower.
As content marketers, we’re taught to focus on messaging—on story, tone, positioning. But that’s only half the story.
What often gets overlooked is how much structure, flow, formatting, and friction shape the reading experience.
You don’t need to be a designer to apply UX thinking to your content.
You don’t need to be a designer to apply UX thinking to content.
But you do need to think about your reader’s experience—not just what they’ll see, but how it feels to move through your words.
This might be one of the most valuable skills you can bring to your work: knowing how to reduce friction, guide attention.
Here are five research-backed UX principles to help your content hold attention—and keep readers engaged:
1. Break the Block
UX Principle: Reduce cognitive load to increase engagement
Here’s the thing—readers are often looking for specific information. And before they commit to reading, they scan to see if your content feels worth the time and effort.
That’s where paragraph structure plays a major role.
Most people know, at least in theory, that long walls of text are hard to read.
But in practice? Dense paragraphs still show up all the time—in blog posts, web pages, PDFs, white papers… everywhere.
Why does this happen?
Sometimes it’s unintentional. Writers think their paragraphs aren’t that long. Or formatting gets handled as a last-minute detail. Other times, there’s hesitation—people worry that shorter paragraphs might look “choppy” or “less professional.”
But here’s what the research—and user behavior—tells us:
Short paragraphs help people read faster.
And faster reading leads to better understanding and higher engagement.
Long paragraphs are visually intimidating. But people still write web content like this all the time.They create unnecessary friction, especially for online readers who are scanning first, reading second.
But most web readers? They skim to decide if it’s worth their time... then they read.
Research shows short paragraphs are better:
According to the Poynter Institute’s Eyetrack III study, short paragraphs (1–2 sentences) receive more than twice the attention of longer ones. That’s a big deal when your goal is engagement.
And the effect is amplified on mobile—what looks like a 5-line paragraph on desktop might become 15 lines on a phone. That’s not just harder to read—it’s discouraging to even start. Be sure to review your content on mobile before publishing
To be specific:
Short paragraphs: 1–2 sentences
Medium: 3–6 sentences
Long: 7–18 (!) sentences
But what if you’re writing for print or creating a PDF?
The same principle applies. People still skim, still make snap judgments, and still appreciate visual ease—especially when juggling multiple documents or scrolling through a long guide.
🧠 Shorter paragraphs reduce visual friction. Sure, If your audience is super invested or immersed in a narrative, they’ll dig in for longer paragraphs. But in most cases—especially in marketing and educational content—breaking things up helps people stay with you.
2. Put the Most Important Words at the Front of Headlines
UX Principle: Information scent and the F-shaped reading pattern
When people are actively seeking information, they want clarity and value immediately. (Google favors this, too.) But many marketers (and AI tools) start titles with vague or creative phrases—what I call “appetizers.” These sound clever, but they bury the real value.
For example:
“Behind Every Click: The Strategy Powering Great UX”
It’s creative. But it’s working against you.
The actual topic—UX strategy—is at the end, where it’s likely to be skipped over by scanners. That’s a problem for both readers and search engines.
Let’s unpack why.
Here’s what we know about how people read online:
Users scan in an F-pattern. According to Nielsen Norman Group’s eye-tracking studies, users primarily focus on the top and left sides of the page. That means they’ll often see the first few words of a headline—not the full thing.
Information scent matters. Readers are hunting for relevance. If the headline doesn’t immediately show that the content matches their intent, they’re likely to bounce.
Cognitive load is real. Unclear or indirect phrasing increases the mental effort required to understand what the content is about. When users are overloaded, they tune out.
Search engines, like readers, rely on keywords at the beginning to figure out what your content is about. When the important terms are buried, you risk losing visibility and clicks.
Compare these two headlines:
“Behind Every Click: The Strategy Powering Great UX”
“UX Strategy: The Real Power Behind Every Click”
The second one leads the keywords “UX Strategy”—giving search engines and readers the most important information first.
Being creative is great—but don’t let style bury substance. Leading with strong, specific words helps both your reader and your rankings.
3. The First-Last Focus Strategy
UX Principle: Serial Position Effect
When creating a list of product features or benefits in contnet, it’s common to organize them by perceived importance:
1 = most important, 2 = next most important, 3 = third most important, etc.
But here’s the problem: that linear logic doesn’t always align with how your audience actually processes what they see.
Even if your second and third points are strong, the human brain is more likely to gloss over the middle—especially when someone is scanning quickly or comparing options at a glance.
Not all content is processed or remembered equally. Psychologists have studied this for over a century.
The Serial Position Effect, first documented by Hermann Ebbinghaus in the early 1900s, tells us something critical about memory and attention:
People are more likely to remember the first and last items in a list—and are much more likely to forget what falls in the middle.
This is due to two key memory behaviors:
The primacy effect (we retain what we see first)
The recency effect (we retain what we saw or read most recently)
In UX and content design, this principle applies across all types of content:
Bullet or paragraph lists: Place your most valuable points at the beginning and end. Use the middle for supporting details.
Five-point list? Put your best-performing point at #1 and your second-best at #5.
Paragraphs: Start strong, end with a clear takeaway.
Page sections: Open each with a specific, value-packed header. Close with a clear transition or conclusion.
Page flow: First and last impressions matter—think of your hero message and your CTA.
If you want your content to capture attention and be more memorable:
Lead with impact. End with a punch. Let the middle support, not carry.
4. Contrast Helps Hold Attention
UX Principle: Visual hierarchy
When it comes to holding attention, how your message is laid out on the page can be just as important as what you’re saying.
The visual structure of your content—things like formatting, spacing, and emphasis—has a direct impact on readability, comprehension, and engagement.
And yet, one of the most overlooked factors in content—especially blog posts, product pages, and sales pages—is contrast.
If everything looks the same—same font, same weight, same spacing—nothing stands out. The eye doesn’t know where to go.
Over time, that uniformity creates a kind of visual fatigue. Readers disengage—not because the content isn’t useful, but because the experience of reading it becomes mentally tiring.
Contrast introduces variation that re-engages the reader and reduces cognitive load. It creates rhythm, guides the eye, and gives the brain natural stopping points—all of which make your content easier to consume.
This is something skilled copywriters have long understood—especially on long-form sales pages. It’s the layout that holds attention long enough for those words to land.
But the absence of contrast? That’s where long-form content starts to feel like a chore.
It doesn’t have to be overwhelming. In fact, even small changes can make a big difference.
Contrast can look like:
Use of Strategically bolding key phrases
Using subheads to break up ideas
Varying font sizes to create a visual hierarchy
Adding icons, background colors, or boxed callouts to direct focus and provide visual rest
Introducing white space to keep the layout open and inviting
If everything looks the same, nothing stands out.
And it’s not just about the reader experience. There’s an SEO benefit, too. According to Google’s John Mueller, bold or italicized text can help search crawlers identify the main points of your content, which means thoughtful formatting doesn’t just help your audience—it may help your rankings as well.
So if you're a content writer, don't treat design as decoration or an afterthought.
The structure of your page—the visual rhythm, the spacing, the contrast—is part of your message.
5. Use Familiar Words
UX Principle: Cognitive fluency and processing ease
When something takes more effort to understand, readers are more likely to tune out—regardless of how smart it sounds.
Many content marketers—especially those writing in B2B or technical fields—default to formal, abstract language because it sounds professional. Think words like implementation, management, enablement, optimization.
But here’s what the research shows:
A study published in Applied Cognitive Psychology found that people perceive fluent text—that is, text that’s easier to read—as more trustworthy, more likeable, and even more intelligent than denser, more complex writing.
In other words, how easily your words are processed affects how credible your content feels—even when the information is exactly the same.
Words that end in “-ment” (management, enablement, development) and “-tion” (implementation, transformation) tend to be broad, vague, and conceptual.
They slow down reading because the brain has to work harder to translate them into something meaningful.
The more familiar your words are to the reader, the easier they are to skim and absorb. That means better comprehension—and stronger engagement.
Overusing formal or abstract language can make writing feel like it’s dancing around a point rather than getting to it.
Compare:
❌ “This solution facilitates the implementation of improved content management workflows.”
✅ “This tool helps you manage content more easily.”
The second version doesn’t just sound simpler—it’s easier to understand at a glance. It gets to the point without sacrificing credibility.
Practical Tips to put this to use:
Choose concrete verbs over abstract nouns: Say “use” instead of “utilization,” “build” instead of “development.”
Look out for noun clusters ending in “-ment” or “-tion.” If you’re stacking more than two in a sentence, simplify.
Use words your audience uses—mirror their language, especially in sales and user-focused content.
Don’t mistake complexity for authority. Simpler words can still carry weight—especially when they’re well-chosen and confidently delivered.
If your audience can’t absorb what you’re saying, it doesn’t matter how brilliant it is. Familiar words turn good content into content that connects.
Final Thought: UX Is a Secret Weapon for Content Marketers
You don’t need to be a designer or developer to bring UX thinking into your content. You just need to care about how your content feels to the reader—not just what it says, but how easy it is to follow, absorb, and act on.
In fact, this might be one of the most valuable skills you can develop: the ability to look at your content not just as a writer, but as a reader. Because when you understand how layout, pacing, and formatting influence attention, you can make your content more effective—without writing a single new word.
That’s how you keep people on the page. That’s how you help your message stick.
And just a reminder—your job isn’t to make the text “shorter.”
It’s to make it easier to read.
