The importance of a headline

by Shaun | May 21, 2015 | web content

Over the next few weeks I’m going to write an article or two about what is important on your home page.

Firstly, a little known fact. The average attention span is now 8 seconds – down from 12 seconds about five years ago.

If we assume that the home page is the first page a visitor encounters, you need to make a good first impression. And the first impression is the headline, so it’s quite clearly one of the most important thing you can have on your website.

You probably already have seen the power of the headline these days, because of the prevalence of “clickbait”. You know those posts on Facebook or down the side of a page you visit with a, “You won’t believe what she did” type of headline? You know you shouldn’t click, because you know that is what they want, but you do anyway, because you want to find out what she did. And after you have clicked you are left going, “meh”. But you still click the next one.

It’s the same with news website headlines. They need you to click. Their readership numbers are their lifeblood. So they craft headlines that make what is on the other side of the click look very interesting.

So that, in a general sense, gives you an idea of the importance of the headline. When it comes to your home page the numbers touted are that on average only 2 out of 10 go beyond the headline when they land on a website.

I find that figure unusual. Why, if you’re looking for something would you not quickly skim the page? Well I guess that is the nature of modern life. If it doesn’t look like this site can fulfil your needs, you want to be out of there and looking at the next website ASAP.

Your headline needs to say to anyone visiting your site, “Yes I can fulfil your needs”. If it doesn’t there are out of there.

I read a story about an advertising exec who rewrote the headline for a an advert over 100 times. That is the importance of the headline.  Without a good headline, no one reads your copy. And if no one reads your copy, no one clicks your call to action

What does your headline need?  It needs to be specific. It needs to be able to be read at a single glance. It needs to solves the user’s problem. Think of it like this. Every user that is coming to your website is coming for a reason. They want your business to be the end of their searches. Think about it. If you are looking for something specific, do you want to go back to the search results and continue looking, or do you want the next website you go on to be the one that gives you what you want?

That is the importance of the headline. To be able to tell someone in one second, “Yes I can give you what you want”.

Content is King

by admin | Sep 4, 2014 | web content

Web design is important. You want to delight you users as soon as they come to your site. It is why all web designers constantly seek to keep ahead of the curve as far as emerging trends in web design are concerned.

But as I have heard it described, the web design is the showroom for you products. If you are selling online, once you have the showroom nicely presented, you need something to put in the showroom.

And what you put in the showroom is the content.

To start off with, when designing your landing pages, get straight to the point. People came to the page for a reason, so make sure you address that reason clearly.

That means that the headline is all important. Thanks to computers, people now have very short attentions. If you can’t entice them in the first 3 to 5 seconds, you have lost them. People want to know what it is your business can do for them.

The stat is that 8 out of 10 people will look at your headline. Only 2 out of 10 people will read the rest of your content if there is no headline to engage them.

When it comes to writing articles or blog posts for example there is the 50/50 rule.  Spend 50% of your time crafting the headline and the other 50% of the time writing the article. There is sense in this. People skim the internet and then delve deeper when a headline engages them.

Once you have the headlines sorted out you then need engaging content, naturally enough. The headline says, “Look, over here”. The content justifies why they are looking. Every single sentence must entice the user to want to read me. You have 8 seconds to engage a user. (It’s why I keep my blog posts short). In addition to text, images also help.

Once you have engaged the reader, if you are selling something you need a call to action. But more on that in another blog post. I don’t want to go on too long.