Statistics That Show How to Get People to Read Content
Your web content serves a few purposes, from drawing search traffic to establishing a ranking order to providing useful information to the reader. All of these things naturally intersect. For instance, fresh and useful content will attract more eyes and keep people on the site longer, helping to establish your site as an authority and increase your ranking. As such, you need to carefully consider every aspect of your content and how effective it is. Do people really read it? How can you get them to stay on the page longer? How can you increase engagement with the text? What is it that your visitors are seeking when they come to your site initially?
To get started, we will take a look at some interesting statistics that show how people view and interact with web content, allowing you to create an experience that draws them in.
Readers Skip Short Words
You cannot cut shorter words out of your content entirely, but you should be aware that most readers scan content, looking for valuable information. They’re busy and they want to take away the main idea with as little actual reading as possible. As a result, they fixate on the larger words — eight letters or more — and they skip over your two-letter and three-letter words in about 75% of read-throughs.
Most Page Views Run Under 15 Seconds
Your initial goal is to get someone onto your page, but then you need to consider dwell times and how long they view your content. In most cases (55%), people only stay on a page for under 15 seconds. This is not always a bad thing. Perhaps they scanned your landing page, realized that your product was exactly what they wanted, and moved on to a product page. As long as they’re still on your site, it’s fine. The problem is when they land on the page, look at it for a moment, and then either close the window or click the back button and choose another search result.
If that’s what happens, it shows that there is a disconnect between what they expected on your page and what they found. It’s important to craft useful, high-level content that gives them the answers they’re looking for and the information they want. If they get confused or instantly feel like the result does not meet their expectations, they’re quick to move on. Quality content capitalizes on that first 15 seconds to direct the user and get them to stay on the site.
Users View the Top Left Most Often
Your best information needs to be on the top of the page and on the left-hand side. There are two statistics that support this. First, 80% of the time that people view a page is spent on the top, without scrolling down. Only 20% of a person’s attention goes to anything lower on the page that they have to scroll to get to, and many people never scroll at all. Second, people only look at the right half of a page for about 30% of the time they’re on the page. More than two-thirds of their time lingers on the left.
When considering how to present your information, make sure that the useful content that keeps readers’ attention is high on the page and on the left. The reason that people often leave a page or feel that it doesn’t meet their expectations is simply that the content they wanted — which is on the page — is not in a place that they can readily locate.
Crafting Excellent Content
These are just three examples, but they help to show how important it is to work with content specialists who understand what your site needs and how it can connect with your audience. To get started with high-quality content, just get in touch with us at Content Customs at your earliest convenience.
