Siteimprove Announces Release of New Readability Feature

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – October 5, 2016 – With the importance of user experience on the rise, Siteimprove is excited to announce the release of Readability within Quality Assurance. The new Readability feature will help customers evaluate and improve the readability of their website content. Making readability improvements can increase the amount of content visitors consume and interact with, which is often vital to an organization's branding and buying process.

Readability is the measure of how difficult content is to read and understand. Globally, readability recommendations and requirements can differ, but based on the average reading level of the general public, best practice is to aim for a reading level of a 12-year-old. For accessibility purposes, WCAG 2.0 guidelines state that content should not be more advanced than the lower secondary education level.

Siteimprove Readability provides customers a full overview of their web pages with a readability score tested against one of seven recognized readability tests. Before the score is calculated, Siteimprove Readability extracts the textual content of a page utilizing machine learning and returns results based on the actual content of the page. Readability also highlights instances of poor readability elements exactly where they occur, including long words, long sentences, and polysyllabic words.

With this information, Readability gives web teams the ability to evaluate and improve content, whether that’s focusing on difficult-to-read web pages or setting an overall goal to meet an average reading level.

“Creating a tool that allows customers to check the overall quality and readability of their web content is a top priority for us,” said Kate Sygrove, Director of Product Development at Siteimprove. “Readability has truly given us the ability to offer customers an all-in-one web governance tool where they can check on both the quality and complexity of their web content and take action to make improvements.”

Customers from several markets tested the Readability feature prior to launch, including customers from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Australia. Tim Peterson, Creative Director of Texas Parks & Wildlife, tested the Readability feature and immediately saw value in being able to access everything he needs for web governance in one location.

“Previously we didn’t really have a way to check our entire site’s content and include it as a part of our web governance process,” Peterson said. “With the new Readability feature, we can see the readability test results directly on the page reports right alongside our other Quality Assurance factors, giving us an easy way to check the quality of our content overall.”

With seven recognized readability tests, Readability provides a solution for customers in a wide variety of industries and markets. Siteimprove Readability has a choice of ARI (Automated Readability Index), Coleman-Liau, Flesch Kincaid Grade Level, Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease, Gunning Fog, LIX, and SMOG to test content against. If customers don’t know which test to select, Readability defaults to the test best suited to their market. 

About Siteimprove

Siteimprove provides organizations of all shapes and sizes with solutions that make website management, maintenance, and optimization both easier and more affordable. With a worldwide customer base of nearly 4,000 customers, Siteimprove serves dozens of markets from offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Minneapolis, Oslo, Sydney, Toronto, and Vienna. For more information, visit siteimprove.com.