Optimizing Your Content For The Impatient Searcher
Time is a valuable thing… especially when it comes to web browsing. In today’s fast-paced world, you can’t miss a beat with your website visitor... or you might completely lose out on their business. Here’s how you can optimize your online content to ensure your visitors don’t feel like their time is being wasted.
A Google study showed that a mere 400 millisecond search delay (or literally, the blink of an eye) resulted in a significant decrease in searches. This was a huge insight into how valuable time is when it comes to optimizing your content online. There's so much information out there to discover… and web users are constantly sifting through content from one online source to the other. However, they’re much more likely to invest their time into content that’s properly optimized, and a website that won’t keep them waiting.
How fast does your website load?
Before we start talking about quality of content, you need to first make sure your website is fast-loading. The last thing you want is for your potential customer to be essentially “put on hold” and forced to wait too long for your page to load after appearing in search. The impatient searcher will surely click away if they can’t reach your webpage fast enough. Besides, there are plenty of other businesses competing for attention that offer the same services... so there really isn’t a reason to wait if they don’t absolutely need to.
Not sure how long you’ve been making your target consumer wait? You can test the speed of your website using helpful tools like GTmetrix.
Optimize your content for mobile devices
Big news: a recent finding by StatCounter Global Stats shows us that internet browsing on mobile and tablet devices has just surpassed that of desktop devices. So, if you’re still thinking desktop-first when it comes to optimizing your business website, you might want to start thinking differently!
Unfortunately, mobile devices provide a much slower internet browsing experience due to the limited capacity of their hardware. Accordingly, businesses should consider having a mobile version of their website that will be much lighter and easier for mobile devices to process and load.
Make your content reader-friendly
People tend to scan web pages rather than reading every word… so it’s definitely beneficial to organize your brand’s content accordingly. If you have a long article or blog piece to share, break it up into sections or use sub-headings throughout to help your visitor easily move from one thought to another, and decide which sections they want to spend more time on.
In addition to this, keep in mind the value of white space. You need enough content-free territory on your pages in order for your visitor to focus on what matters and not become overwhelmed with too much information. Without sufficient white space, a web page can look too cluttered and congested – even dated – which is often a major turn-off.
Simplify complex topics
Something to always keep in mind: keep your content simple! Overwhelming your web page (and visitor) with complicated, over-bearing topics or information is a surefire way to lose out on business. If your first-time visitor is looking to get a chance to know your brand but isn’t sure where to even start, they’ll be happier to get to know a company who will give them the information they need right off the bat. Respect your visitor’s time, and they’ll respect you in return.
