A lot of internet marketers, copywriters, web designers, and advertisers are like to tell you that people scan through websites. They like to talk about figures, such as, if you haven’t caught a website user’s attention in 8 seconds they will click off. They claim that for that reason, you should design your website for people who scan.
For starters, this is all accurate. People do scan through websites.
However, optimizing your website too much for scanning may not necessarily get you more views or more conversions. Why? Because you can have all of the right key words, but if the content lacks a thorough connection with the user, then they’ll still click off when they see that you have perfunctory content.
A lot of this type of advice is “stat-controlling” modification. That is, it is more of a way of insurance, more than it is an actual content strategy. It’s like saying that you’re going to design a drinking glass that can hold water as long as it is sitting on a surface. But, what happens after you pick up a glass of water? The surfa
1. Websites are Like Books
First, website copywriters often act like scanning is “bad”. It’s not always bad. Sometimes it’s simply the way people read.
The way that we can understand website scanning is like imagining your website as a nonfiction book. That is basically what a website is.
The homepage is your cover. The heading is the title. And everything in between are the ideas.
A nonfiction book is not like a book with a fictional story, where someone has to read it from front to back in order to keep chronological track of the plot. It is more like a nonfiction book, with several chapters about several different topics and subtopics.
I know that when I read nonfiction books, I scan through looking for the chapters that I find the most beneficial. While I’m scanning, I may find other topics in the book that I may want to read later.
This is how people usually look at websites.
People do not scan websites because they have a short attention span, but because they are browsing. Browsing is an action that people use when they aren’t sure about what they want. They are looking for something that stands out.
So, keep that in mind when developing your website.
2. Respect the User’s Right to Browse
Imagine that you have walked inside of a fast-food restaurant, and then you see the menu that is placed above the checkout counter.
You are not sure what you want to order.
Perhaps the restaurant has some new deals, or items on the menu. Maybe you are looking at prices within your budget.
Then, the cashier begins staring at you and interrupts your browsing. The cashier asks, “Have you found what you are looking for?”
Suddenly, you lost track of what you were reading on the menu.
“I’m just browsing,” you retort.
For starters, it’s rude to interrupt someone who is browsing. Of course you haven’t found what you are looking for. If you had, then you wouldn’t be looking.
This is the risk about having CTAs or paywalls pop up in front of someone when they are browsing.
You will hear a lot of digital marketing people tell you that popups in the middle of reading a blog article are good because it puts the user on the spot to make a purchasing decision. They are wrong. Popups that interrupt reading are not beneficial for conversions, and sometimes that can be the trigger to get people to click off of your website.
If you must have popups at all, then placing popups when the person is leaving the website has a slight conversion rate at about 17%. Popups that interrupt activity such as reading or watching videos is considered annoying. That’s because it is.
I call these types of digital tactics “booby trap marketing”, because the content is set up like a trap. This is completely unnecessary. Rather, you should employ a strong inbound marketing strategy to give people engaging content, making use of lead magnets. Then, you can focus more on creating content rather than figuring out how to set up a secret passage to the shopping cart.
It’s always good to use empathy. When it comes to website design, empathy is far better than setting “booby traps”. Put yourself in the user’s shoes. As web users and business owners, we shift from being the user of a website, to the people making the content.
Have you ever found a blog article on a search engine, began to read it, and then an obnoxious call to action ad interrupts what you are currently reading? And then what? You click out of the website because you are annoyed.
3. Understand Why They Browse
It may be a little bit bad for the ego, but people usually don’t want to read every page on your website, and watch every video.
Here are some reasons why they may be on your website.
- They are looking for a solution to a problem, and found your content.
- They are looking for a website that has products.
- They are looking for a website that offers solutions to a set of problems that your product can solve.
- They clicked on your website by mistake, or it wasn’t what they were looking for.
- They want to read solutions to their problems that is engaging and easy to understand.
- They were referred to the article through a share.
Once they are reading your content, they choices. But first, did the content solve the problem it promises to solve in its heading?
If it doesn’t, then that’s a big hit toward a conversion. If it does, then it paves the way for the user to consider your product, or even look at your other content. Because, sometimes, content is the product.
4. Provide More Related Content
People scan to make a quick evaluation toward what other content is on the website.
If your website does not provide enough content, it may look like you do not take the website seriously. When a company doesn’t look like it takes its content seriously, then people go elsewhere.
A nonfiction book has a table of contents, an index, and sometimes a bibliography. This is because with every problem that a book attempts to solve, there are usually a large cluster of related topics that are either subordinate or in relation to the main problem that the book explores.
These books are more than a bunch of words, but an outline, or a network of related topics that together form a solution to a set of problems. This is the way that you should think about your website. Nothing is a “weird hack that works”. That’s the problem with optimization-only thinking. You don’t merely need insights, but insights on your insights.
That is why it is important to actually have a plethora of content. This establishes that you clearly understand the topic that you are offering to help people with. It also helps create awareness in a much more memorable way.
5. They Can’t Find a Solution
The biggest reason why people scan is because you made content without a solution.
While it’s not always important to solve every problem, solving problems are important in the form of relaying information to the user.
Therefore, it’s important to make sure that you don’t delay the reader with irrelevant philosophical discussion when they are looking for solutions. That can be avoided by clarity, brevity, and making the articles read more like an article and less like a philosophy book.
This can also be enabled by intuitive navigation. If the reader can’t find the solution in one article, then you need a clear navigation style that let’s the user know where the other sections of your website are. This can be resolved by approaching your website like it’s a user interface and not like a “website”.
6. You’re Using Too Many Pictures and Visuals
People generally like images, but some websites use way too many visuals.
It can be distracting.
Images can be
- Visuals within the article, such as photos of people
- Too many infographics
- Too many diagrams and charts
- Too many CTA graphics and lead magnets
- Drawer menus or other elements that cut into the website content
- Popups, which we have already discussed
It’s easy to think that more is better. Keep it simple.
