What to put on a flyer

Pin a flyer to a noticeboard and watch someone walk past it. They do not read it. They glance, decide in about the time it takes to pass, and either stop or keep going. Everything on the sheet is competing for that one decision, which is why a flyer’s content is better thought of as a reading order than as a checklist of things to include.

Two seconds and one glance

Nielsen Norman Group’s eyetracking work found that people scanning a page fixate hardest on the first line and on the first few words of each line, and that the further down and further right a word sits, the less likely it is to be seen at all. Their reading studies put comprehension of an average page at about 28% of the words. A flyer is a harsher version of the same problem, because there is no scroll and no second visit.

So the practical rule is not “include a headline, an offer, proof, details and an action”. It is that those five things have to arrive in that order, and each one has to be readable without the one before it.

One: the headline

The headline is the only element you can assume is read. It should name the thing, not tease it. “Grand opening, Saturday” works. “Something big is coming to Mercer Street” does not, because it spends the one guaranteed impression on a riddle.

Across the 108 designs counted for the table below, the median headline default is two words and 92% run to six or fewer. That is not a stylistic preference. A headline set around 40 points on an A4 sheet has room for about six words on two lines before it has to shrink, at which point it stops being a headline.

Two: the offer

The offer is the reason to act. It can be a discount, a free thing, a date, or simply a service that did not exist on this street last week. It sits directly under the headline and is set noticeably smaller than it, often at about a third of the headline size.

Be specific. “10% off all weekend” outperforms “special opening prices” because it is checkable. If the offer has conditions, the UK advertising code (CAP rule 8.17) requires that significant conditions appear in the marketing communication itself: a closing date, geographic or age restrictions, availability limits, and the promoter’s full name and correspondence address unless it is obvious from context. Rule 8.18 allows a flyer with limited space to point to an easily accessible source where the full conditions are stated, which in practice means a short line and a web address, not silence.

Three: the proof

Proof is the sentence that makes the offer credible. Three items from the menu with prices. A line about who runs the place. A photograph of the actual shop rather than a stock interior.

This is where the list block earns its place: 56% of these designs carry one, and a list of four short items reads faster than the same content as a paragraph. Keep each item to a few words. A list that wraps to two lines per item is a paragraph wearing a bullet.

Four: the practical details

When, where, and how much. This is the part most flyers get wrong, and the count explains why: only 14% of the designs have a dedicated date or time field and only 17% have a place or address field. On the other four fifths, the date and the address have to be written into a subheading or body slot, which means it happens as an afterthought and ends up in the footer at nine points.

Decide where the when and where is going before you start writing. If the layout has no slot for it, take a body slot and give it to the details instead of to a paragraph nobody will read.

Five: the action

One action. Not three. A flyer that says visit us, call us, follow us and scan this has asked for four decisions and will get none of them.

Two thirds of these designs carry a contact line, and it is almost always in the footer: a phone number, a web address, a social handle, sometimes an email. That is fine as reference information. The action itself is different: it is the single thing you want done, stated in the imperative, in the largest type in the bottom third of the sheet. “Come to the opening, Saturday from 8am” is an action. “www.example.com” is a footnote.

Where each sits: the three designs mapped

The grand opening flyer example is one promotion in three designs, and each one solves the reading order differently.

The date poster puts almost everything into the headline: two stacked text slots at 116 and 120 pixels, which is around 58 points at A4. The offer is a single 42 point line under it, the proof is one short paragraph, and the action is a small label plus a web address in the footer. It is designed to be read from three metres away on a window.

The offer sheet inverts that. The largest element is the price, at 96 pixels, with the product name at 76 and a discount badge beside it. Proof arrives as a list of features. It is the only one of the three with a QR code, and the QR sits next to the action, which is where a code belongs.

The photo invitation gives most of the sheet to images: a hero photograph, three captioned thumbnails, and a headline at 100 pixels. Its proof is visual, and its footer carries a website, an email and a handle. It is the version that works at arm’s length, in the hand, not on a wall.

Same shop, same weekend, three different reading orders, because a window poster, a counter card and a hand-out are read at three different distances.

What to cut

Ten things that survive most drafts and should not:

1. A second headline that says the same thing in different words.
2. The company mission or “about us” paragraph.
3. Stock photography of people in a meeting.
4. Social icons for platforms you post to twice a year.
5. A full postal address on a flyer being handed out inside the shop.
6. Terms in six point type that nobody can read and that satisfy nobody.
7. A second QR code.
8. The words “we are pleased to announce”.
9. A price crossed out that was never charged.
10. Any sentence longer than about fifteen words.

The cut list matters more than the include list, because a flyer’s failure mode is not missing information. It is a sheet so full that nothing on it is first.

Contact and QR: one action only

If you use a QR code, give it a job and label it. An unlabelled code is a shrug. “Scan to book a table” tells someone what the phone is for before they take it out of their pocket.

A QR code cannot be added to a design that does not already have one, because there is no QR tile in the builder’s Add items panel: only the 17 designs out of 172 that ship with a QR slot can carry one. If your chosen layout has none, either pick a layout that does or make the code separately with the QR code generator and drop it into an image slot.

Print and social carry different word counts

A printed sheet is read standing still. A post is read moving. The same promotion needs shorter copy and a bigger action on screen, and usually loses its list entirely. The differences beyond word count are covered in print flyer vs digital flyer, and the pixel dimensions for each destination are in the flyer sizes guide.

The quickest test for either: cover everything except the top third and ask whether a stranger would know what is being offered and by whom. If not, the reading order is wrong, and no amount of design will fix it.