It's all over in 10 seconds!

There was a great piece of research done in the mid 2000's which proved that whatever we might be taught by the expression 'don't judge a book by it's cover', the truth is that we all establish our first impression in the blink of an eye.

What's worse is that longer exposures don’t significantly alter those first impressions (they might even boost your confidence in your instant judgments!)

The same is true of your marketing.

Research done by the Nielsen Norman Group proved that the speed at which visitors would leave a website was very high at the 10 second point. If a user stays for longer than say 30 seconds then it is probable that the user would stay for an increasingly long time.

In other words, the first 10 seconds of the page visit are critical for users' decision to stay or leave.

But why?

In the same way as we naturally make instant judgements about whether we are going to like someone, we also make virtually instant judgements about whether a website (or any other piece of marketing for that matter) is going to be worth looking at or not.

To make your content worth looking at it needs to be:

RELEVANT & COMPELLING!

It needs to catch the eye of the visitor and engage them with content that's relevant to their search immediately - and you only have a few seconds to make that connection!!

The authors of the research put it beautifully when they said:

some initial screening has to be passed before a page is examined in detail

In other words, a visitor will only glance at your site. If it is not immediately obvious that it is relevant to their search and then providing a compelling reason to dig further, the visitor is gone faster than you can say "please comment on my article" !!

So, have a look at your own website (and that of your competitors) and just check your marketing against these three simple questions:

1. Do I say what other people don't say?
2. Do I do what other people can't do?
3. Is my solution to the prospects problem obvious?

If the answer is NO to any of these, then you need to seriously revisit your marketing activity - because the chances are that it is not doing anything for you currently!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And this might just be a good starting point for you!

Steve

The Imora Marketing Academy