Easy-to-read, scannable content is essential in this age of shrinking attention spans. The key? Avoiding great walls of text by adding visual breaks that make comprehension quick and easy for site visitors.
Are Attention Spans Really Getting Shorter?
You may have heard that the human attention span is currently equivalent to that of a goldfish–maybe 5 to 8 seconds long. That number has been challenged and largely debunked but studies have shown a general downward trend in attention spans.
As noted by Dr. Gloria Mark in a discussion with the American Psychology Association, there is some nuance behind the statistics. I encourage you to read her interview about attention spans for the full story, but the long and the short of it is, for online activity specifically, there has been a steady decline in attention spans in recent years.
According to Dr. Mark’s research, the average duration was about two-and-a-half minutes in 2004, dropping to about 75 seconds by 2012. The average attention span now is about 47 seconds–a “robust” figure that has been replicated in other studies.
You Don’t Have Long to Hook Your Audience
How much text can a person read in 47 seconds? I did a very unscientific experiment using a news story read slowly, not skimmed quickly. In 47 seconds, I read about 230 words. On my laptop, that is about a screen’s worth, no scrolling.
So, to extrapolate a little, if you greet visitors to your home page with a wall of text and no breaks, you would have, theoretically, one screen’s length to reel them in before they move on. (On a phone, you might have even less time given all the scrolling involved on that small screen.)
How do you make sure people stay on your site? Make your page scannable so they can get the gist fast and be motivated to continue reading.
How to Create Scannable Content
Visual breaks are key to scannable copy. Here are three easy ways to create them: subheadings, images, and judicious use of formatting.
Subheadings
Subheadings provide breaks in text while also creating a kind of roadmap for readers, helping them quickly and easily grasp the message you are conveying. They are especially important in long-form copy.
Note that to create headings, you must use the hierarchical heading tags in your content management system. Simply bolding a phrase does not make it an “official” heading. (Read more in my post about heading tags.)
Images
Images, whether photos, illustrations, or graphs, not only break up text but can also replace it.
For example, instead of a lengthy description of statistics, you can create a graph or table to communicate the information efficiently and in a way that will be more appealing to readers.
People are far more likely to stop for a colourful graph or illustration than for a long paragraph of words and numbers. A picture really is worth a thousand words.
To ensure images are accessible to all site visitors, use alt tags to write a description of each image. Screen readers use alt tags to describe images verbally to people who cannot see them. Search engines also use alt tags to assess the content of a page or post.
Formatting
Formatting, like the occasional use of bold or italics, can break up text while also drawing attention to key points. Just be sure not to overuse these formats because they can be like crying wolf–if everything is flagged as urgent, people will start to ignore those flags. (The same can be said of exclamation points. Please, please limit your use of them!)
And remember, anything that makes text easier for humans to read makes it easier for search engines to assess, which can help with your search engine rankings.
To read more about using headings for scannable content, see my Break It Down post.
For examples of using images to break up text, and more information on creating a subheading structure, see my Think Like a Librarian post.