Cut it Out!

How many times have you been directed to a company’s website and been sadly disappointed? This has happened to me on many occasion and I am always struck at how little time a small business spends on creating their website. A website is the digital storefront. This is the place where potential customers see, for the very first time, a company’s image. To go to a website where links do not work or are outdated, pages are under construction, or it is hard to find the contact information just speaks volumes to me about their physical store.

Think of your website as the place where customers get answers. What do they want to know? It is not to learn about the history of the store or to find out the reason why you started the business. This is all fluff and useless to the customer. 

According to Statistic Brain (2014), the average attention span in 2000 was 12 seconds. In 2013, it was 8 seconds. This means we are 33% more impatient! In addition, the study found that the percentage of words read on an average web page is 28%. So remember this. Look at your website and cut out 33% of your content (or more). People scan for the information they want and ignore the rest. I bet you stopped reading before you even got to this sentence!

Would a small business open their store with only half their renovations done, half their inventory in place, and half their staff trained? I do not think so. They need to think of the whole business, including the digital platforms. Get the website done properly, get it done first, get it done professionally, and cut out the fat. Be ruthless. Then start to think about the rest of the social media strategy.

Source:

http://www.statisticbrain.com/attention-span-statistics/