Since this is my first post here, let me take a minute to introduce myself. I work in sales and marketing for a telecom and IT company and I have known Eric for a few years now. I am not the SEO expert that Eric is, but I have substantial experience in the sales and marketing fields with a pinch of web design and a dash of blogging. I am here to share a bit of my melting pot of random knowledge. So here are 3 keys to drawing in looky lous.
1. The 3 second rule is in effect. And I’m not referring to that candy bar you just dropped. What I am telling you is that you have 3 seconds from the time someone stumbles across your site before they decide if you offer what they are looking for. Most times the easiest way to accomplish that goal is through the use of pictures.
Let’s face it, most people don’t read very fast and they don’t have a long attention span. If you can show your site visitors a picture of what you do, they will be motivated to investigate farther. Sometimes this can be more difficult than others.
If your site is about cars, it’s pretty easy to find a picture of a car. But if your site is about, oh I dunno, SEO, this task is exponentially more difficult. How do you describe SEO with a picture? With some creativity, a simple yet meaningful logo says it all. The bottom line is spend some time looking at your site in short blasts and ask yourself, if I stumbled across my site via a search engine or link, would I be able to tell in 3 seconds or less what this site is all about?
2. The 1 click rule is equally important. Your readers need to be able to get to the main topics of your site in one click from your home page. Here’s an example. If you have that same blog about cars from the last topic, and you find out that you have an article about Mustangs on the front page of digg, you better get a link, tab, or logo on your home page to take people to your Mustang section. You have to remember, most internet users are members of the microwave generation. We want the world and we want it in two minutes or less. If you want to draw us in, you gotta give us what we are looking for quickly or we will move on.
3. Make it shiny. Give your readers a little something that is pleasing to the eye. It doesn’t take much and you don’t have to be a graphic designer to pull it off. Do some research into what colors evoke what emotions. The colors chosen for this site are very relaxing and organic. The perfect choice for a site whose theme is “fresh”.
So take some time to really think about the first few seconds after a visitor finds your site.
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Very real and very true points all. Thanks for the post.
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Hey thanks Todd!
We know all these things, but we all forget to actually incorporate them into our sites as we design and optimize. Like the totally true-ism, ‘A picture tells a thousand words’. I knew that, but I really thank you for the reminder and the explanation that surfers need to be trapped with some eye-candy or whatever in those vitally few 3 seconds. So guess who is now going to make a point of including a thematic pic in EVERY possible post??
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