Did you know most people decide whether to stay or leave your website in less than 8 seconds?
We live in the scroll-and-scan era—and if your site doesn’t catch attention fast, you're losing potential clients before they ever read a word.
In this episode, I’m sharing exactly how to design your website for short attention spans—so you can turn more skimmers into shoppers.
Whether you sell services, courses, or products, these strategies will help your website work smarter (and convert faster).
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Episode Transcript
Did you know that most people decide whether
to stay or leave your website inless than eight seconds?
We live in a scroll and scanera.
If you didn't already noticeand if your site doesn't catch
attention fast, you're losingpotential clients before they
ever read a word.
In this episode, I'm sharingexactly how to design your
(00:22):
website for shorter attentionspans so you can turn more
skimmers into shoppers.
So, whether you sell services,courses or products, these
strategies will help yourwebsite work smarter and convert
faster.
So let's dive in Struggling toturn website traffic into real
sales.
You're not alone and you don'thave to figure it out all
yourself.
Welcome to Smarter OnlineBusiness, the podcast for course
(00:46):
creators, coaches ande-commerce entrepreneurs who
want their websites to convertvisitors into buyers without the
tech overwhelm.
I'm your host, Saunders, awebsite strategist and
conversion expert with over 20years of experience.
Each episode delivers simple,proven strategies to help you
generate more revenue and makeyour website your smartest sales
tool.
(01:07):
Welcome back to today's episode.
We're talking about how do weget those skimmers into shoppers
.
So why does attention spanmatter and what does it mean for
your website?
So online visitors today arenot reading every word.
They're skimming for value.
This means your design, layoutand copy must immediately show
these things who you are, whatdo you do, who is it for and
(01:32):
what do they need to be doing.
Next, if your site buries thegood stuff or looks like a wall
of text, which is easy to do, noshame there.
Just note that we need to fixthat.
People will bounce before theyever see your offer.
And, speaking of wallet tax, asI talk about this right now and
as I built this episode, itmade me realize, yeah, I
(01:53):
probably need to be going tosome of my pages on my website
and breaking up those texts.
So I want I'm going to talkabout how do we do that today in
this episode.
So first we want to have avisual hierarchy that helps
better conversion and flow inyour website.
Your site should be designedlike a funnel, getting people's
attention span into the goal youwant them to do.
(02:16):
So what can help with that?
First off, clear headlines H1sand H2s, that's, heading ones
and heading twos speak to thepain points or to the
transformation that you servefor your clients.
And then we want to havesupporting short punchy
paragraphs or bullet pointsunderneath these headlines.
We want to make this scannable.
(02:38):
And then we want to use strongcall to action buttons that
really stand out, and what Imean by that is we want to make
sure that we have buttons thatare a little bit of a different
color than the rest of our site.
This usually would be yourthird color and your branding is
used for your call to actionbuttons.
We don't want it to blend inwith the other colors on your
(02:58):
website.
And then we also want to usewhite space to reduce overwhelm,
and it also gives us a placefor our eyes to land.
That white space helps our eyesland on those call to action
buttons.
So white space is very, veryimportant and it also helps us,
like I said, not be overwhelmed.
Think about your desk.
When you cleaned up your deskand cleared out the clutter, it
(03:20):
feels a lot less overwhelming tohave that white space.
And then we also want to usevisual anchors like icons or
subheadings to really help drawthe eyes where we want them to
go.
So here's a bonus tip I wantyou to try and this might sound
silly the squint test.
If you squint at your websiteand can't tell where your eyes
are supposed to land and go,it's time for a layout update.
(03:43):
So try that after this episode.
So then we also.
The next part we want to do ismaking sure our website is
mobile.
First.
That helps engagement.
Over half of your visitors arelikely viewing your site on a
phone, so that means that thebuttons need to be thumb or
finger friendly and theheadlines should be attention
(04:04):
grabbing and above the fold onmobile.
Many times we'll make thatabove the fold on desktop, but
sometimes we miss the mark whenit comes to mobile because we
haven't checked the mobileversion as well, and load speed
matters more than ever on mobile.
It is so easy for us to bedesigning our website on a
desktop, uploading that greatimage that just looks beautiful
(04:25):
on desktop and still fast ondesktop, but it's too slow on
mobile.
So make sure you're checkingyour speed on mobile regularly.
And then we want to stackimportant information early.
You don't want people to haveto scroll five screens to
understand what you do.
That needs to be really quickand easy for them to see.
So a beautiful desktop isdoesn't matter if your mobile
(04:46):
version is frustrating.
So we want to make sure that weare checking both very, very
regularly.
And one of the things I want toencourage you to do, if you
haven't already is go on over tosmarteronlinebusinesscom
forward slash newsletter.
We give out tips like this oncea week.
We absolutely do not like spamas much as you, and we love to
(05:07):
try to just make thesenewsletters bite-sized and
really nice and actionable,something you can do something
with and take that action, orschedule it on your calendar to
take that action later.
So be sure to go over tosmarteronlinebusinesscom forward
slash newsletter and sign upfor our newsletter.
And then I want to get to thatbonus that I promised you about
(05:31):
making sure our websites arescannable and skimmable, and
it's a 10 second skim test.
So you can do this today, and Irecommend you get a friend to
do this.
You can do this yourself, butwe do already know a bit more
about what our websites are forand who they serve.
So this is a little bit betterif you get somebody else who's
less familiar.
So ask them to open up yourhomepage and give them just 10
(05:54):
seconds to answer thesequestions what do you offer, who
is it for, and what actionshould they take next?
If they can't answer theseclearly in under 10 seconds,
then your visitors probablywon't be able to either, and
this is going to give you theperfect, you know, reassurance
and clue that you need to beworking on the layout of your
(06:16):
website and making sure it'sscannable and easy to understand
in less than 10 seconds.
So I challenge you today have afriend and do this.
I'll read those again what doyou offer, who is it for and
what actions should they takenext?
So have them check and seewhether they can figure that out
in less than 10 seconds, and Ihope you love this episode of
(06:39):
the Smarter Online BusinessPodcast and share it with a
friend if this was helpful.
I want to make sure that we arereaching as many other
businesses as possible to helpthem make their websites smarter
and work harder for themwithout them working too hard.
And be sure to go over to ApplePodcasts and rate us a review
over there.
(06:59):
That helps also spread the word.
We will be so forever gratefuland we will see you next week.
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