A lot of work and usually money goes into driving traffic to your website. So, when you get people there, it better CONVERT. And the #1 conversion factor is your message, the content on your web pages. In fact, the message is more important than the design!
Over the past several years, website content—especially on your core marketing pages—has changed from blocks of paragraphs to something more akin to PowerPoint slides. And there’s good reason for that…
Peoples’ attention span has shortened.
A lot.
5 Ways To Give Your Content The PowerPoint Treatment
- Stay very focused on the objective of the page. What has to be on the page in order to achieve that objective? Anything else must go! Less is more.
- Use strong visuals to punctuate the important points.
- Write in short sentences.
- Write conversationally, in the language of your Client.
- Break-up content with formatting:
- Bolded words/phrases
- short sentences,
- sub-headings, and
- bullets points.
What About Articles?
Blog articles, like this one, are intended to discuss a subject in some detail. Typically, blog articles are written to attract organic SEO traffic and/or as part of on-going Client education. They’re very different from the core marketing pages of your site which are intended to CONVERT. However, even in-depth articles can benefit from some PowerPoint treatment.
We’re taking our own medicine here. We’re currently (again?, still?) going through all of our core pages and giving them the PowerPoint treatment. When you design your message for the attention challenged (which is most of us these days!) you significantly increase the Gravity of your website.