Saturday, November 1, 2008

The 2 Second Test for your Website and Advertising

When it comes to surfing the Web we are a finicky lot.

If you do keyword research you will discover that most of us type 'problems' or 'requests for solutions and information' into the search box of search engines such as Google. It is common to see significant numbers of searches that start with 'How do I.....' or something similar. Even if the searcher doesn't actually type in those first few human sentence construction words, that's probably what's going on in their mind.

So how does that affect what we do when preparing our website pages, or any of our collateral for that matter?

If we accept that an answer or information is really what is being sort then, if we are going to have any chance of success, we need to establish immediately that they are looking at the right page or advertising brochure.

Within 2 or so seconds of reading they will decide whether this is the right place to be to get the answer or just move on. The Internet is very susceptible to this as it is so easy to click back to the search listing and try the next one.

The secret, which isn't a secret at all, is making sure that the reader can instantly see that there is something worth reading further for.

Just think about your last visit to the petrol station. As you walked up to the kiosk to pay you had in front of you a large display of todays newspapers. Are they full of small type that you can't read without your glasses? No, they have huge headlines that they have written to , hopefully, entice you to get closer and read the next size text, the sub heading. If this is interesting enough we may well pick up, and buy, the newspaper.

Writing your collateral and web pages is no different.

Attract your visitor by confirming that this is the right place to be and then draw them into your document.

On the Web you only have around 2 seconds to do this - or they are gone.

There is an excellent publication on this subject here:
Don't Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

If you need help with your Sales and Marketing program and message and wording contact me at Alloy CRM


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