Education and Training Websites: Planning Introductory Content for New Visitors when Services Expand

When expanding educational services, the first impression for new visitors depends heavily on how clearly they can navigate and understand your content. This guide outlines practical steps to organize introductory pages using descriptive headings and simple language, ensuring that users with varying abilities can quickly grasp what your expanded offerings entail without feeling overwhelmed by complex structures or jargon.

Setting the Scene: A New Visitor Arriving at an Expanded Education Site

This is a hypothetical situation, not a proposal or a report of anything tested.

Imagine the person responsible for a small training organization's website. The organization has long offered evening language classes, and it has just added three new tracks: exam preparation, workplace communication, and a short course for trainers. The web pages exist, but the homepage still speaks only to the original evening-class audience. A newcomer lands on it after searching for exam preparation and sees a headline about evening classes, a schedule table, and a single enrollment button. She cannot tell within a few seconds whether the exam track is for her, who teaches it, or how it relates to the older classes.

To work through this, the author sketches three candidate openings for the expanded site. The first is a plain orientation panel titled "Start here: what we teach now," listing the four tracks with one line each and a link into each track. The second is a short "Which course fits me?" chooser with three questions about goal, time available, and prior level. The third is a single sentence at the top of the homepage naming all four tracks, followed by a shared introduction that explains how the school's teaching approach carries across them.

Each candidate exposes a different tension. The orientation panel is easy to write and easy to keep current, but it asks the newcomer to read four short blocks before finding her own track. The chooser gives a more personal entry point, yet its questions need answers the author is not sure the organization can commit to, especially for the trainer course, whose prerequisites are still being settled. The shared-introduction approach preserves a unified voice but risks burying the exam track under general language about the school's method.

One point remains genuinely undecided: whether the new tracks should be introduced as additions to the evening classes or as a separate family of programs. That choice affects the homepage headline, the navigation labels, and the wording of the enrollment button. The author leaves it open, noting only that whichever framing is chosen, a newcomer should be able to name her own goal and see a matching path without scanning the whole page.

Using Descriptive Headings to Outline Page Structure

Under Success Criterion 2.4.6, headings and labels must describe topic or purpose. A word or even a single character may suffice if it gives an appropriate cue for finding and navigating content. The intent is to help users understand what information a page contains and how it is organized, so that they can find information more easily and grasp relationships between different parts of the content. The criterion requires descriptive headings only if headings are provided; it does not require headings or labels, and it does not require that heading content be correctly marked up, which is covered separately.¹

The benefit is orientation, especially for people with cognitive or visual disabilities and for users whose disabilities make reading slow or who have limited short-term memory; such users benefit when section titles make it possible to predict what each section contains. When headings are correctly marked up and identified, the criterion also helps screen reader users, for example in an automatically generated list of headings, a table of contents, or when jumping from heading to heading within a page.¹

You can test your own heading list against a sample reader question: “I teach evenings; what else is open to me?” Take your current headings and write one sentence under each describing what a newcomer would learn there. If a heading produces a vague sentence, consider renaming it to name the visitor’s need rather than your internal category.

For example, suppose a draft heading reads “Programs and Scheduling.” Rewriting it as “Evening classes and weekend workshops” tells the evening teacher what changed. A second heading, “How to choose a track,” works better than “Registration information” when the page mainly helps people compare options. You might keep your original wording as a subheading if it still matches paperwork visitors will see elsewhere.

Try the same edit on two or three headings and compare which version answers a newcomer’s question sooner. This is an author’s demonstration, not evidence about how readers respond. You can choose to keep a familiar term when visitors already know it, or favor a descriptive phrase when the service expansion introduces an unfamiliar option. Note privately which headings you changed and why, so later edits stay consistent.

Organizing Content Hierarchy for Easy Navigation

Headings convey how content on a page is organized. Browsers, plug-ins, and assistive technologies can use them for in-page navigation. Rank matters: the most important heading has rank 1, the least important rank 6. A heading of equal or higher rank starts a new section; a lower rank starts a subsection within the higher-ranked section. Skipping ranks can be confusing and should be avoided where possible — for example, an h2 element should not be followed directly by an h4 element. Skipping is acceptable when closing subsections, such as an h2 beginning a new section after an h4 closes the previous one. In fixed page sections like sidebars, heading ranks should not change with the ranks in the content area; consistency across pages matters more there. Headings are also useful for labeling page regions, and visible headings make those regions easy for all users to identify.²

You can take one page of draft headings and decide which level should carry the orientation. Consider putting “What we teach” near the top, then placing the evening classes and the new daytime tracks as separate peers beneath it. That choice tells a newcomer the two offerings belong to one family without flattening their differences.

Try a small sort of your own material. Write each existing heading on a separate line, then group the lines that answer the same question. If “Evening classes” and “Weekend workshops” land together while “How to enroll” sits apart, you have a rough hierarchy. You might promote “How to enroll” to the first screen and let the program descriptions follow.

You can also check whether any heading does two jobs. “Programs and scheduling” can become “Evening classes and weekend workshops,” with the schedule placed under each program. This is an author’s example, not a tested result. Choose the version that lets a reader recognize their own situation before they read further.

Finally, decide where the new tracks sit relative to the established ones. If you present them as peers, keep their descriptions at the same length and depth so the newcomer can compare them fairly.

Writing Clear and Understandable Text Blocks

Readers with impaired language skills are more likely to grasp page content that uses easy-to-understand language. A person with a language impairment may follow simple sentences and common words, while complex language with uncommon words may be inaccessible.³

A clear visual layout helps comprehension. Short blocks of text, whitespace, and good separation of foreground from background all make content easier to understand, according to the source.³

The same page lists concrete writing choices: easy-to-understand words, short sentences, simple tense, succinct text, unambiguous content, literal language, and avoiding double negatives or nested clauses. It also advises separating each instruction and explaining implied content.³

Take one paragraph you already use to introduce the established evening classes, and compare it with a draft paragraph for the expanded offer. The aim is to make the two readable side by side before you decide how to publish them. You can copy both into a single working document and mark where a new visitor would need a second reading to understand what is being offered.

The author’s demonstration uses two invented sentences. The original reads, “Our evening language classes have long served local learners, and our newly introduced weekend workshops extend this provision.” A plainer version might read, “We run evening language classes. We have also added weekend workshops for people who cannot attend in the evening.” The second version separates the two offers and gives the reason for the addition. You might choose a middle version that keeps your own tone but moves the change into its own sentence.

Apply the same edit to the paragraph describing the new tracks. If you introduce them as peers, keep the sentence pattern parallel; if they are additions, say so once and then describe them on their own terms. This is a writing choice, not a claim about how visitors will respond. You can read both versions aloud and keep the one that lets a newcomer answer “what is available to me?” without rereading.

Labeling Sections for Cognitive Accessibility

Short headings that group related paragraphs and describe each section are the relevant mechanism the source names. For documents longer than three or four paragraphs, it states that headings and subheadings are important for usability and accessibility by helping readers determine the overall outline and navigate to specific information of interest.⁴

The source also cautions that visual styling alone does not carry the label. It notes that visual readers scan for larger or differently styled text, but assistive technology users cannot see those changes, so changing the style is not a sufficient cue. Headings must instead be semantically tagged so assistive technology can identify them and use them for navigation; the source calls this one of the most important tools for screen reader users.⁴

Take one heading you have already drafted for the expanded offer and decide what job it should do: orient a newcomer to the whole site, or name one track. Consider a heading like “Programs and Scheduling.” Writing it as “Evening classes and weekend workshops” puts the two offerings side by side and tells a returning evening learner where the new material sits.

You might also check whether two headings answer the same question. Group your existing headings by the question each one answers, then choose which group belongs higher on the page. If “Evening classes” and “Weekend workshops” keep appearing together, you can decide whether one shared heading should cover both or each needs its own line.

For the introductory paragraph, compare a sentence about the established classes with a draft sentence about the new tracks. Decide whether they should read as peers or as an addition, and keep the wording parallel only if you choose peers. These are author’s demonstrations, not tested results.

Reviewing Introductory Pages for Consistency

A practical next step is to take one existing introductory page and read it aloud as if you were a newcomer arriving after the expansion. You can mark each sentence that assumes prior knowledge—the evening class schedule, the registration routine, the familiar room names—and note where a new visitor would pause. This is an author's review of your own draft, not a test of any service.

Suppose the page opens with three paragraphs about the established evening classes before mentioning the weekend workshops. You might rewrite the first paragraph so it names both offers at the same level, then let each get its own short block beneath. The choice is yours: peer treatment signals that the new tracks are equal in importance, while sequential treatment signals they are additions. Either can work, as long as the wording makes the relationship clear rather than leaving readers to infer it.

Consistency is easier to check when you lay the pages side by side. Consider listing the recurring elements—welcome sentence, program names, scheduling mention, contact path—and comparing how each page handles them. If one page says "our evening classes" and another says "the language program," a reader may wonder whether these are the same thing. Decide on one phrasing for the established offer and one for the new tracks, then apply them across the introductory pages. You can keep a short note of the phrasing you chose so later edits stay aligned.

Not every inconsistency needs fixing at once. You might sort your findings into two groups: wording that could mislead a newcomer about what is offered, and wording that is merely uneven. Address the first group before publishing the expanded pages, and leave the second for a later pass. This keeps the review focused on the reader's understanding rather than on polishing every sentence.

Frequently asked questions

How can I test my own heading list against a sample reader question?

You can test your own heading list against a sample reader question: “I teach evenings; what else is open to me?” Take your current headings and write one sentence under each describing what a newcomer would learn there.

How can I sort my existing headings to see which ones answer the same question?

Try a small sort of your own material. Write each existing heading on a separate line, then group the lines that answer the same question.

How can I check whether two of my headings answer the same question?

You might also check whether two headings answer the same question. Group your existing headings by the question each one answers, then choose which group belongs higher on the page.