Content reductionism in the web world

Categories: News,
  • Less really is more
  • Attention span online is really short
  • Keep it simple stupid
  • One fact beats a thousand opinions

Useful Information

The percentage split of time spent reading/browsing versus doing stuff is dropping as consumers are now comfortable buying, organising and completing transactions online. This means the traditional drive to generate marketing-led content has to change and be more focussed on what the web site can actually do for customers. Where does this leave the role of content creation?

In my opinion it’s about writing concise copy that gets the point across quickly and shows clearly the next step that the site visitor should take. This should see the end of long rambling marketing pages that lack substance. Multimedia needs to move centre stage so the inclusion of pictures (that tell a thousand words) and short (less than 3 minutes) video is a must. Every page then can become a summary of the topic so should always end with a choice of actions or further reading should the visitor still not be ready to “take the next stage”. This could see a number of stepped pages on each topic and this allows organisations to test the depth of information required by measuring conversion rates at each of the different levels.

Design becomes paramount when you’re “taking stuff out” of pages – the content should be sectionalised for easy reading and use easy-to-read fonts and colours. And get rid of the clutter becaase if you don’t the new breed of intelligent browsers will.

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