Are We Losing Our Attention Spans?
Attention readers❗
Pardon the raised voice. These days, it’s hard to earn the undisturbed focus of our readers.
Let’s cut to the chase. Yes, modern humans are losing their attention spans. Microsoft research shows that human attention has dwindled by 25% over the past few years, clocking in at a paltry 8 seconds. That is a tiny margin for digital marketers to tinker around with.
The brevity of the average Tiktok video comes in at 10-15 seconds. Even the world’s fastest platform struggles to retain its fleeting attention spans!
Why the sudden decline??
The internet is estimated to contain 64 zettabytes of data. Before composing this article, I didn’t even know “Zetta” was a measure word!
The internet’s celestial scope is no thanks to the digital revolution that birthed it. The digital revolution exposed digital agencies like ours to radical forms of user-data capture. The accessibility of such data helped influence businesses to optimise their marketing strategies to keep their audience’s eyes affixed on their brand.
The volume of content floating around eclipses the attention customers can readily dish out. The internet is littered with Buzzfeed-style listicles and clickbait headlines!
And with 1.98 billion websites, Google has the thankless role of trawling through each website, ranking each website based on its usefulness and relevancy to user-search queries. It’s no secret that over 75% of users never make it past the first page!
At the end of the day, businesses are vying for our shrinking attention spans, each poised like gladiators, staking their claim over their market share territory. And that plot of attention real estate is getting smaller…
Soothing their weary eyes?
The implication is simple: consumers are becoming weary. Turn their heads one way, there’s an ad. Turn the other way, and there’s another ad.
Searching for a particular product or service? Expect over 10,000 search results that you’ll have to rummage through till sundown. Digital fatigue syndrome is a real phenomenon, and it’s delimiting your ability to increase your reach!
There’s too much information and too little time!
As a Brisbane brand agency, we recognise that the simplest of strategies are the ones that yield outstanding results. Your priority should be to first make sure your house (brand) is in order.
Instead of chasing the next big cutting-edge practice, first, focus on these rudimentary elements that define your online presence:
1. Optimise your website’s load times.
Did you know that over 53% of users leave a website that fails to render in 3 seconds? Users are time-poor and short on patience! Other common deterrents include broken “error 404” subpages and dead-ends.
To determine how fast your website loads, you can utilise Google Analytics to determine how long each page takes to boot up. According to Google, an outstanding page score to aspire to is 90 and above.
2. Copy that!
What are visitors expecting when they peruse your homepage? It’s not a 10,000-word Master’s thesis! Modern consumers don’t want to scroll through a sea of unending words.
As discussed in previous articles, a cursory look should be enough for customers to gain a feel and idea for your brand and its merits! Make sure your copy is succinct, straightforward and fluff-free. Trim out the spin, narrowing in on the fundamentals.
And remember! It’s the passion in the prose that inspires. Make sure your brand voice rings clearly throughout all aspects of your verbal branding strategy. The same rule applies to your social media presence.
3. Ongoing off-page SEO
As tantalising as your content is, what’s the use of magnetic content if your online presence is not attracting a sizeable viewership?
Sadly, there are no shortcuts to amassing a loyal brand following. While “shockvertising” has proven to absorb attention like a sponge, we 100% do not recommend it. Off-page search engine optimisation (SEO) is the industry’s go-to strategy.
Off-page SEO yields long-term rather than short-term gains. SEO is a difficult area of expertise to master and requires frequent experimentation, data analyses and the utmost patience!
Posting user-relevant content on a frequent and consistent basis on platforms popular with your target demographic is one surefire way to generate organic traffic and grow your audience.
To augment your off-page efforts even further, consider studying your direct competition’s off-page SEO strategy. Identify their intrinsic strengths and the mistakes they’ve made along the way. By treating your rivals as “ongoing case studies”, you gain the added advantage of learning from the first mover without its pitfalls.
For technical and on-page SEO, we recommended deferring to the expertise of web agencies like ours.
So much work, so little time⏱️
We’ve barely scratched beneath the surface of what can be done to win the scant attention spans of the modern consumer. Those precious 8 seconds don’t come easy!
From guerilla marketing to targeted advertising campaigns, there is a litany of possibilities to be explored! Nonetheless, they each share the same end destination: high visibility and high customer engagement.
Take it from us! As Brisbane’s leading brand agency, building better brands form the heart of our unified vision. Offering a full spectrum of brand-building services, we know the tricks of the trade like the back of our hands.
With a strict emphasis on the digital, we design future-proofed websites with exceptional loading times for heightened SEO, where lag is a relic from a forgotten past. Our switched-on team will guide you through every stage, from strategy to execution, assisting our clients to realise their long-term success.
Through a combination of on-page SEO (keyword research and integration) and concise yet captivating copywriting, our websites are built to stand out from the internet riff-raff.
To put it simply, people are always migrating from one trend to the next without delay. As the future unfolds, the waning attention spans of the modern consumer are dwindling as we speak! So let us transform your brand’s online presence into that next big thing!
Book a meeting with us, and let’s chat about how we can help strengthen your online presence.
Let’s talk. Don’t be a stranger ?️.