Help your readers' eyes climb down the mountain

Plenty of other more experienced and well-known Web writing experts have espoused the value of a good sub-heading. Sites I read regularly all agree on this, including the excellent Nick Usborne on his Excess Voice site and a site I use a lot for its straightforward, understandable advice on Web content, Webcredible

Subheadings are like climbing footholds

I see subheadings as footholds on a mountain climb, except most of the time you're climbing downwards. Readers' eyes need something to anchor on, hang on to, whilst on their way down. If they're not sure of their route, they can always go back to a foothold and check. If they finish the climb down, then they can look at the map of footholds and see if the route they took was what they were intending.

Subheadings work in the same way. Readers use them whilst they scan a page, checking their route, 'Is this reallly what I want?' After reading, and more importantly before, they can look at those headings and judge for themselves whether your page has really got what they want. And they know from your subheading 'footholds' that they'll either be safe on the way down, or that they might fall half way and disappear off to someone else's Web site.