First Impressions Really Do Matter

My dad used to be astonished by the fact that I could walk into any store at the mall and know within minutes if there was anything I was interested in buying. I can't remember how many times I'd walk out of a store after a brief stint only to see the classic, over-exaggerated look of shock on my dad's face. But even in my younger days as a teen shopper, I knew that you don't have to see everything in order to make a value judgment. And the same concept applies to the content on your website. (Also, I'm fairly certain this is the first time a mall has been mentioned on the Newfangled website…you're welcome.)

In a time where there's no lack of content on the internet and a simple Google search will produce a myriad of results, how do you know when you've found what you're looking for? Of course, the ranking of results in a search engine are important (I certainly don't want to minimize the importance of SEO), but they're not the only deciding factor in attracting visitors who will stick around long enough to consume the content you've painstakingly created. And furthermore, search engines aren't the only way people will stumble upon pages of your website. So what can you do to retain these visitors?

Improving the First Impression of Your Content

In his March 2010 newsletter on best practices for formatting web content, Chris Butler suggests that "the impression your article makes on a reader in that incredibly brief moment in which she decides whether or not to stick around and read is almost completely dependent upon it's format." A title and a long, single block of text doesn't do you or your potential readers any favors - they're likely to quickly move on to another article that's more easily discernible as relevant information. It could be that your article was exactly what they were looking for, but how would they know that? It's important that the format of your writing allows readers to quickly scan the text and make a value judgment of their own. Sub-headlines can highlight main ideas, and shorter paragraphs, lists and images make the content more easily digestible. And chances are that implementing these techniques will also improve the organization and quality of your writing as well - making it more deserving of the interested readers you so earnestly desire.

So to Recap...

Because so many other websites are competing for the attention of your potential audience, visitors need to be able to quickly scan articles to figure out whether they're relevant enough to actually read. You can optimize your articles for scannability by:

• using sub-headlines to highlight main ideas
• using shorter paragraphs to make easily digestible blocks of content
• using lists and images to break up the text

It's not enough to just produce quality content. It's time to start paying attention to more than just getting content out there - what good is content if it does nothing to engage your possible readers?