In a prior tip, I discussed the value of having web sites with responsive design. With responsive design, your website reassembles the content to look good on mobile devices.
However, as a writer, I’ve discovered a problem.
Responsive design can mess up your carefully crafted headlines. Especially on smart phones.
For example, you might write:
Shop from our contemporary furniture collection. Stylish. Clean lines. Easy-to-care fabrics.
Because the sentence is long, you may wish to break up the lines. It’s simple enough to do. To keep the lines together, put a shift+return command after “collection.” and the rest of the text flows to a second line.
Shop from our contemporary furniture collection.
Stylish. Clean lines. Easy-to-care fabrics.
Now you’ve made a pretty headline.
However, because of that shift+return command, the headline might look like this on a smart phone …
Shop from our contemporary furniture
collection.
Stylish. Clean lines. Easy-to-care
fabrics.
Not such a pretty headline.
At this time, I don’t have any solutions that are fully satisfactory.
For now, I recommend …
- Write short pithy headlines.
- Write long headlines with no breaks.
- Write the headline with the pretty breaks for the website, and hang the way it looks on a smart phone.
Note that the first solution — write short headlines — poses a problem for the web commercial writer. With commercial writing, the headline often has many tasks. Ideally, it should …
- Grab attention
- Contain a unique selling proposition
- Contain a customer benefit
- Contain relevant keywords
That’s a tall order for a brief headline. Depending on the content of your page, you might be better off with the other two solutions.
For now, do the best you can and …
Easy Web Tip #196: Check out how your headlines render on a smart phone and mobile device. Then adjust accordingly.
