One of the most difficult areas that website designers have to battle with is the extremely short attention span of the online audiences. It is very difficult to attract visitors to a website and it is even more difficult to keep them there. And how well a website attracts visitors depends on a number of factors including crisp headlines, interesting and relevant content, pleasant design and so on. And quite often, minute nuances of design are what determines the overall look and feel of the web pages. And often these are the basic elements that are overlooked. One such thing is the 'Read More' or 'Continue Reading' link that is placed below the title or the summary of the article.

There are several ways of presenting article titles and summaries and asking visitors to click through the link. While the links are very prominent on some websites, they are much subtler on others. But the trick is to present it in a innovative and creative manner that should look good as well as score good on the functionality part.

Importance of Read More Links

Content Compression
Designers can reduce the space for content on the homepage by providing just the title or perhaps a brief summary and then provide a 'Read More' link to view the full content. This allows more content to be made visible in less space. Also, visitors can read more headlines!

Track Content Popularity
The Read More links enables the webmaster to track the popularity of the most popular content easily. This is better than pasting entire articles on the homepage because it becomes difficult for the webmaster to understand what the visitors want to see.

Increase Page Views
If visitors find the headlines or the summary interesting, they will have to click through to view the whole article. And this happens for each and every article they need to check out. As a result, the number of page views that your website increases and your website becomes more attractive to advertisers.

Tips to Design Effective Read More Links

Prominent Text Links

Read More links are best presented with simple text. Just make sure the link is underlined, bolded, colored or marked with a > sign so that they stand apart from the other generic links on your web page.

Include Icons

You can also add icons beside the read more link or even to replace the text link for it. Icons draw more attention to the layout and make the links more prominent.

Use Buttons

Buttons are an excellent way to present Read More links if you want them to be very prominent. This is widely used in commercial websites. In fact, some websites also have images and CSS styled text. However, take care not to use too many buttons as them it would just overwhelm your audiences.