Lovers often look into each others’ eyes and whisper “sweet nothings”. They are just a string of words, sometimes just noises, that mean “so much”. Darling, gorgeous, bunnikins – whatever takes your fancy. But these words of high emotion trigger our brain into some high level activity.

New research conducted in Germany has looked at the way our brain functions when it is stimulated by emotional words – and the results have important implications for anyone running a web site.

What the study shows is that when our brains are triggered by emotional words it boosts understanding of what we are reading. Emotional words therefore make it easier for us to read. (You see I said “boosts understanding” – “boosts” is emotional, the alternative of “make it easier to understand” is neutral and therefore more difficult to instantly “get”).

Newspapers are frequent users of emotional language, which means that if your web site is to succeed in getting rapid recognition of your message – quick as a flash (oops more emotional words for you) – then you need to write like a newspaper reporter. In fact, web sites are read rather like tabloid newspapers – people skim through the pages, flitting from bit to bit, looking at the pictures, reading captions and only reading the whole story if they like what they see.

So writing your web pages rather like a tabloid newspaper is likely to engage readers more and help them understand what you say thanks to the high levels of emotional language. Sorted.