It can take around five seconds for a visitor to your website to form an opinion on what they find, and decide whether they want to stay or try elsewhere, proving that website design is crucial in helping attract and retain customers and clients.
But once you have drawn them in, to keep them interested you need interesting and relevant content, including images and words. But how much content do you need? We have a look at what constitutes too much or too little content.
Web designers will be familiar with terms such as content shock, information overload, and attention crash, which all refer to the same thing - content overload, or an overwhelming amount of information.
The digital age has meant that people have a near-infinite wealth of information on the internet, and there can be so much that people have become jaded and tired of reading long paragraphs and complex sentences, preferring shorter, skiable content to find the answers to their questions in the shortest time possible.
• Write with self-explanatory language. Try to avoid using unfamiliar words and phrases, instead of sticking to familiar, self-explanatory words. Your content should be easy and clear to understand without needing further clarification.
• Eliminate any nonessential steps. Customers will not want to have to jump through hoops to find the information they want, so whether it’s a sign-up process or a product user guide, get to the point, and eliminate any non-essential steps.
• Create skimmable content. When searching the internet, you do not want to read everything, and just skip to the relevant information and move on. Use bullet points and shorter paragraphs that can be scanned easily.
• Keep a solid text-to-image ratio. Use a balanced mix of text and images to diversify your content, but don’t clutter up your content with a dazzling array of image and visual elements.
• Hide extra options. Collapsible menus are a great way of cutting the clutter. Some people like the base-level information while others prefer details. This way, they can choose for themselves. Using drop-down menus to hide extra content until it’s needed is ideal for any type of user.
Thin, or too little content was one of the first search engine optimisation (SEO) issues that were targeted by Google in its updates, which kickstarted a war against low-quality content.
Thin content refers to content that has little to no value. SEO experts have been taking Google’s warning seriously, and know that quality content is needed to keep Google happy.
However, there is still a good section of website owners who are unaware of this web design faux pas. The first stage in fixing thin content issues is adding value-enhancing or high-quality content.
You should be aware of your target audience, and what constitutes necessary information and what doesn’t, so be mindful of this and cover only the most pertinent things on your website. Be informative; your customers want to know what your business will do for them. It’s all about maintaining a balance.
Always try to create purposeful content that solves a problem and adds to valuable content creation. Always make sure to back your claims with supporting information and add links to resources to enable further reading on the topic.
If you’re looking for website design in Inverness, get in touch today.