Attention Span: It’s Role in Customer Experience

What is an Attention Span?

Google search says, “the length of time for which a person is able to concentrate on a particular activity or subject.” According to a study Human’s attention span to consume any internet feed is 8 seconds, which is decreased from 12 seconds in last decade. This is due to the expansion of internet to larger audience through mobile, tabs and watches including wi-fi, 3G/4G etc.

Since the attention time is too less, so this is the time you need to feed your consumer with essential part of your website or marketing material. You don’t only need to say it quick but also well mannered.

Why Attention Span is Important for UX Designers & Marketeers?

As you are designing for your Users obviously; So it is very important for you to engage them in your product or in your marketing piece as soon as possible and then to capture their lead in order to generate business. It is important because you want to be a commercially successful designer not a flop art gallery artist. Don’t make people wait for the information. Since you have only average 8 seconds. It is the attention-deficit position of your users that you need to overcome in order to successfully interact with them. Particularly mobile users don’t just have very less attention spans but they also expect quick satisfaction when interacting with your app, otherwise they might be close or even uninstall it.

Quick Design Solutions

1. Use bullet points for key facts or interactive to make them stand out and be easily recognizable. It is a very well-known method for making key information easy to locate and eye catching.
2. Use sub headings with descriptive wording to enable users to jump to the appropriate section if they wish. In this modern time users usually skim and scan pages to try to find out the piece of information they are looking for.
3. Keep the content short and to the point. You can also split any long content out into secondary pages if applicable.
4. Use rich media and alternative content presentation to keep user’s attention — the use of video as an online communication medium is well documented. But also think about other ways of representing information such as images, graphs and other visual forms.
5. If designing for mobile, then you can also engage your user by giving push notifications & timely pop-ups on web.
6. Before even looking at how you are going to present information on your web pages you need to make sure the page loads as quickly as possible. Studies have shown that 32% of consumers will start abandoning slow sites between one and five seconds. Bounce rate can be improved by up to 30% with the reduction of page size and resulting speed improvements. A one second delay in page load time can result in 11% fewer page views, 16% decreased customer satisfaction and 7% lost conversions.

And now congratulate yourself for concentrating for long enough to this article, thanks a lot.