Tihs tlloaty belw my mnid the fsirt tmie I saw it.
Yep, tshee wdors aner’t elctaxy spleeld crortelcy. Yet, you can slitl raed tehm and tehy mkae taotl snese.
Okay, I’ll stop now. But how the heck does that happen?
The amazing power of your brain
As long as the first and last letter of the word is correct, the order of the letters inside doesn’t matter. Your brain fills in the blanks. Pretty cool, huh?
Essentially the first and last letters create little anchors the brain recognizes. This allows the brain to figure out the words. But if those two letters weren’t in the right place, lewl. (well) See not as easy.
Ok, Dave where are you going with this?
So if the first and last letter help us decipher the word, what happens when you put your website address on things?
People see the www. and the .com. As in www.whatevergoesinhere.com. But since the brain has no idea what’s inside, it can’t easily decipher the words. It disappears.
This means if you want people to actually see the website address you’ve got to create a set of anchors so the brain can quickly decipher it.
How to make your website name visible
Simple, simple, simple.
Just be sure to capitalize the first letter of each word between the www. and .com. So www.whatevergoesinhere.com becomes www.WhateverGoesInHere.com.
Tah Dah! See the difference. Notice how easy it is to look at the address with the anchors in place. Without the anchors, you actually have to stop and work out the address.
Yes, Yes. What if it’s only one word?
If your website address is one word it’s not so much of a problem. But throw that second word in there and you risk your website name becoming invisible. Most people aren’t going to take the time to work it out.
So work it out for them
People need to see the website address in order to visit it. Be sure to make it easy. Just capitalize the first letter of each word.
Now go take a look
Fnid tshoe pclaes you can mkae tihs slimpe canghe. You’ll “see” yuor website mcuh celaerr. 🙂
I learned this little trick a while back. Works well for Twitter names as well.
@FrankDickinson vs. @frankdickinson
You da best Dave!
#DoNotForgetHashtags
huh, I do that all the time. I don’t think I ever learned it, just makes sense. 🙂 I do love that mind trick though… it’s an amazing thing.
PS. I love your 3 minute test in the pop up. Very clever.
Thanks Jackie!
It does make sense doesn’t it. 🙂
Thanks on the pop-up I just added it.
@Chris
You are most likely correct when you say we should capitalize certain letters within a URL. I just like small letters, even at times when I am writing sentences — I write sentences completely in small letters at times. I know — horrors! It is a bad habit I have gotten myself into — but I actually prefer the way it looks, therefore prefer the way a URL looks in all small letters. So when it comes to reading a URL in small letters, I have no problem with reading it. I can scan it quickly and know what it says. If it takes an extra second to read, then I take the extra second to read an maybe memorize the URL. What I don’t understand is, why other readers of blogs don’t take the same time, so that I can have the URL I want! But that is neither here nor there — I see, after reading your post, that readers are either unwilling or unable to read the URLs easily unless they have caps in them! So capital letters it is, I’ll use them from now on, I don’t want to lose any readers due to my stubbornness. Thanks for the advice, Chris!
Thanks for stopping by krissy (see I can use small letters too. 😉 )
It’s not much of a problem if you’re creating a link because don’t have to read it necessarily. They can just click!
When it comes to situations where no click is involved I prefer to make it easier. Glad to hear you’ll give it a try!
That is of course, if you’re talking to me. There is no Chris here.
Just me Dave. Of DaveCharest.com 🙂