Are Ecommerce Blogs Too Hard To Read?
Found this fun tool the other day where you can check your blog (or any other web page)’s reading level. Get Elastic happens to be a College/Undergrad level.
Readability algorithms work by analyzing word and sentence length to assess difficulty. While I’d say this is for entertainment purposes only, if your audience is consumers it is important to take a look at your blog and website content and make sure it’s accessible to the general public.
The average adult reads at an 8th or 9th grade level, and 20% read below the 5th grade level. Would you want to create a usability problem for 20% of your customers? Not only that, but many English-as-a-second-language (or third, or fourth) may not comprehend above the Elementary level.
How could your conversion rates increase simply by using simpler language and shorter sentences on product pages, shipping information pages and email marketing? Jakob Nielsen has a good article on making your site more accessible to lower literacy visitors.
Because blogs are intended to pre-sell product and/or engage in 2-way conversation with customers and retailers, it’s important to write for readability. I ran the readability test on the top 50 online retailer blogs based on subscribers and here’s what I found:
| Blog Name | Reading Level |
| The Avenue (United Retail Group, Inc.) | Elementary School |
| Backcountry Blog | Elementary School |
| Auntie’s Beads Inc. | Elementary School |
| Bluefly | Elementary School |
| Ask.com (IAC/Interactive Corp.) | Elementary School |
| Ice.com | Elementary School |
| Just Ask Leslie (Ice.com) | Elementary School |
| Sparkle Like the Stars (Ice.com) | Elementary School |
| MooseJaw Daily Madness | Elementary School |
| Organize.com Inc. | Elementary School |
| Mr. Paper’s Blog (Paper.com) | Elementary School |
| ToolBarn.com Inc. | Elementary School |
| Urban Outfitters | Elementary School |
| Apple Students Blog | Junior High |
| CafePress | Junior High |
| Crutchfield Corp. | Junior High |
| Dell Inc. | Junior High |
| Figleaves.com Inc. | Junior High |
| Musicnotes Inc. | Junior High |
| National Hockey League | Junior High |
| Powell’s Books | Junior High |
| Replacements Ltd. (Ebay Blog) | Junior High |
| Sierra Trading Post Inc. | Junior High |
| Life at WalMart | Junior High |
| Zazzle Tech Blog | Junior High |
| Amazon Book Blog | High School |
| Apple | High School |
| Bidz.com Inc. | High School |
| Communications.com (Perfume.com) | High School |
| DataBazaar.com | High School |
| Design Within Reach | High School |
| Directron.com | High School |
| DrJays (DJ Networks) | High School |
| Ecampus.com (A Book Co.) | High School |
| Mountain Equipment Co-Op | High School |
| Netflix | High School |
| RealPlayer Music Store (RealNetworks Inc.) | High School |
| Rockler Woodworking & Hardware | High School |
| Rugs Direct (Winchester Carpet & Rugs) | High School |
| Zazzle | High School |
| Alibris Book Blog | College - Undergrad |
| Nike Inc. | College - Undergrad |
| Online Stores Inc. | College - Undergrad |
| Palm.com | College - Undergrad |
| Hewlett Packard | Genius |
| iGourmet LLC | Genius |
| K & L Wines | Genius |
| Scentiments.com | Genius |
| Sephora USA Inc. | Genius |
| Vitacost.com | Genius |
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I’ve heard some bloggers use the fleish kincaid tool in microsoft word, to keep their reading level at a 6th grade level. Have you heard of this? Any thoughts on what level range email marketing should be written in?
Thanks!
Great post btw!
Hi Bansi,
I haven’t heard of the fleish kincaid tool, but that’s interesting.
My opinion is B2C email campaigns should be about that level if they’re targeted at the general population. Some B2B industries can get away with higher (and often need to because of jargon etc).
It definitely depends not on just who the audience is, but who the intended audience is. Since most of these are B2C sites, then they should definitely be very easy to read. Hats off to Dell and Crutchfield because I would have expected them both to be at the upper end of reading level chart.
Sephora is probably has the biggest disadvantage because of a very young customer base.
Nike and HP definitely have some work to do. Nike, really…
hey thank you so much for suggesting the tool… i was surprised to see my blog’s reading level…it showed “THE GENIUS”, i seriously laughed after viewing the result.
are people finding difficulty to read my blog?
As someone who’s very concerned about web content readability, I recently wrote a post comparing 12 online readability testing tools. You might find it useful.
Also, be careful with the criticsrant tool - if you use their embedded code it will include an advertising link on your site.
Thanks for sharing that Christian - your post and the warning about the embedded code :)
Great tool, but not too sure about its accuracy. I got genius for http://www.google.com haha
Great post! It looks like I have some work to do. My blog, which is for parents of tweens, rated “Genius.” Oh, how it’s going to hurt to intentionally dumb things down.