How Long Can I Have Your Attention?
How long can you stay focused and do something? How long can you read a blog post or book? I’m going to challenge you, can you read this blog post till the end?
How long can I hold your attention, one minute? Two or three?
People are having shorter and shorter attention spans. It’s difficult to read a long blog post or a book because we get an urge to read something else, see something else, maybe browse Facebook or check Twitter.
The problem is we are having an information overload. Our brains are flooded with information like never before. With information coming from friends as messages or posts or content from brands, tweets, news. There has never been a time with this much information and there is no sign of slowing down.
So what is happening?
Well now news and blog posts are getting shorter and shorter. The language is getting simpler. Click bait and other small gimics are being used by webpages to catch people’s attention. Sometimes the content can be totally irrelevant to the headline.
Can you believe 10 years back we were asked to read newspapers to improve our English and vocabulary?
So what can brands and websites do? Maybe devide their content in to small chunks and publish as multiple posts. Make sure the content is clear and get to the point fast. Because it’s difficult to keep users' attention and one has to make sure the content flows quickly so people doesn’t lose their attention.
So what do you think about people having shorter attention spans?
