Today, most of the people spend quite a lot of time on the internet. Even though some of us sit in front of our PCs for 5-6 hours a day, rarely do we read the whole text we come across. People usually just skim through the text and sometimes they don’t even read the headlines completely.
How much time a person will spend on a website depends on its design and the quality of the text. As you could have seen in the title, patience is not something that most of the web users can brag about. Therefore, if you have a website and want to draw attention of a big number of consumers, be sure to become familiar with some of the aspects of people on the internet.
The Importance of the Headlines
This is something that decides whether a person will stay on the page or continue browsing. The results of a study conveyed showed that people are drawn by headlines even more than they are by pictures. Most of the people who took part in the study tended to check out the headlines first, and pictures only afterwards.
A person’s attention is grabbed by the use of short and catchy headlines. There is no need for very long headlines as people rarely read them if they are too long. When skimming through the headlines, people first check out the left parts of them and that is why it can be a good idea to choose a good headline with the first few words that will immediately grab the attention of the reader.
Reading the Text
It is not all about the headline, the text is important as well. Taking that they have liked the headline, consumers will after that carry on and read the whole article. That is why it is important to make the text as quality as possible as it is this quality that will make a person stay on your website.
People don’t even read properly when they are reading on the internet. The way most of the people read online is the F-pattern. A person reads the first line and one below it, while he only skims through the other parts of the text thus reading the part of the text in the shape of the letter F. Averagely only 28 percent of the texts are read.
A paragraph should be shorter, and only then will the consumers care enough to read the whole article. Except texts, videos are also something that leaves an impression on consumers. Too long videos are rarely played full, and people skim through them, same as with the too long texts. The trick is to say as much as possible in quite a short time, in order to maintain user’s attention.
Getting Rid of the Ads
Too many advertisements are something that immediately sends a consumer away. When images appear every second chances are quite smaller he will pay much attention on the text. In order to avoid this, it is a good idea to organize your website nicely.
If there are any ads they should be positioned at the top or left of the screen. That way they won’t cause trouble for a user reading the text but will still be noticed. It has also been shown that people prefer text adds over images. Mentioning statistics and numbers in a short text seems as a better option than an image that pops up. It seems like after so many years on the internet, people have started to ignore those.
Slow Loading Time
This is also something that can drive users away from a website. If loading is too slow, at least half of the people visiting are going to click “back” and visit another, similar page which will load faster than yours. No one wants to wait more than 15 seconds to load a page, impatient users always choose a different, faster website.
It is of great importance to make everything work and make it work fast and smoothly. Any troubles logging in or difficulties with a certain browser will again drive users away from the website. The more effort you put into making the website work, the more visitors are you going to have.
You can find someone who will provide you managed hosting services and whose main task will be to keep website fast, always available and well-organized. This way, more people will stay on the website and possibly read the texts.
Above described habits of web users are definitely something that has to be taken seriously when making a website. Even though it doesn’t look as big a deal, website organization, headlines and opening sentences are a crucial factor in people’s choice of a website to read from. Well-organized websites will always have more visitors, who are going to read the texts you want them to.
