Your website has 5–8 seconds to convince users to stay — what should you do?
Have you ever checked the average time users spend on your page before they bounce (leave the page)? Usually it is something between 5–8 seconds → this is your time window!
Now I assume I don’t need to point out how short that is. So within just these few seconds users decide if they want to keep reading or leave. It should be obvious that with such a short attention span your page needs to do a very good job at making a good first impression — catch the attention with a strong headline, engaging visuals and make sure the user can skim super quickly what all this is about.
Yet so many pages fail with being easy to skim. Or just giving a headline that tells users they are in the right place. Recently I stumbled upon a company’s page that described their service as follow:
“We support users in their decision making process by providing relevant information” — what!?
That says nothing and everything, users have absolutely no idea what service this company is selling.
This got me thinking as I encounter such problem often. Why is it that companies are so bad at describing what they do/sell? Let’s look at a few examples and how it could be done better:
Disclaimer: The following examples don’t mean that the pages are bad or that I wouldn’t like the companies. These are all successful companies and my feedback is given with the most respect and a bit of humor.
Example 1 — Blinkist:
Blinkist is a subscription based service that gives you a summary of the key insights to educational books — it is designed for people who don’t have enough time to read all these books. Now, let’s pretend I am a user who doesn’t know Blinkist. What will I think coming to their landing page?
Click-baity headline ok, that still works for some people. So what is this app all intellectuals are using? Full of curiosity I will read the subline hoping to solve the mystery. The first part of the subline basically just repeats the headline and the second part says nothing at all → “it provides genuine value for people who love to learn”??? Just with the headline and subline you already wasted 3 seconds of my precious attention span. The next 3 seconds need to really bring value or I will leave bored.
Nervously my eyes try to skim for content that brings relevance to the topic. Not so easy as the first paragraph is telling a story about Abraham Lincoln and later I see the mentioning of Apple´s CEO… (remember I — as most users — am skimming and not reading the full sentences). With the rest of my good will I’m scrolling down to find something that helps me figuring it all out. However, I just find more long text passages → aaaand times up, I’m gone!
What could be improved?
If you use a click-baity headline to lure people in it might prove beneficial to use the subline to tell them why they are here and why they should stay. If a visual could tell them what your product or service is about without even reading anything — perfect, use that!
Using a bit of story telling in the first paragraph is not necessarily wrong but if I have no clue what Blinkist is, I won’t be interested to read this so make that clear first. Some bullet points could help communicating the key information so people will stay and keep reading.
Furthermore, important information such as how many books or what kind of books are available are hidden in the paragraphs that I am not reading — these could be the mentioned bullet points with key information. And what about naming some categories or bestsellers, showing covers? Even if I understood what Blinkist is, the barrier to sign up is still high without seeing what the company has to offer.
How many people would make a reservation at a restaurant without seeing the menu first? Yes I know, there are some adventurous hedonists out there who will want to find out but the majority won’t.
Example 2 — Spryker:
Let’s look at another page. Before I tell you what Spryker is doing check the screenshot of the page first and see if you understand it:
Maybe the target audience speaks a different language than me and understands what is written here but I’m a little lost. The page is not cluttered and doesn’t overload my brain with too many things but reading that part below the headline still makes my brain tired — so many buzzwords, I am not a google crawler. Why can’t we use simpler language for our dear website visitors?
So what does Spryker do? If you want to sell products online they offer a platform to bring your inventory online — so basically you don’t have to completely code a webshop with all its functionalities like subscriptions, click&collect, analytics… Now I understand that it can be complicated to communicate all the features in just a small sentence and you don’t need to force that. However, ask yourself if it would be easier to name the core arguments in 3–5 bullet points. This might make users curious and at the same time tell them they are in the right place with little coginitive effort.
Test your own page with the 5 second test
Does your website properly communicate your unique value proposition and make people understand what it is about? The easiest way to find out is by showing it to people who don’t know what you are doing.
Think of it this way: would your mom or dad understand the website? Remember that a huge proportion of users in the internet are not the super tech savvy digital natives. How can you explain your product/service in a very short slogan or with just 3 bullet points?
Try the 5-seconds-test: Show the landing page to someone for only 5 seconds (time it!). You will see this will be over in a blink. Afterwards ask them what the page is about and what they remember about it.
- Can they remember the headline?
- The subline?
- Do they remember the name of the company?
- What visuals did they see?
- What is the product/service?
A good website will give a general idea to the user, so when you ask these questions they should have at least some (correct) answers. If not you will know what to change.
