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Picture, Picture, Your Mind’s Been Captured.

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Gotcha. Did the picture grab your attention? I bet it did. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? You wouldn’t be bored even if you look at the image for quite a long period of time because it is detailed enough for you to analyze the patterns and other aspects of the flower. Surely, a skilled photographer took the picture.

Now, you must be asking, “How is this related to making visitors read your content from the first word to the last?” Let’s just say it’s a rather simple analogy that I made. Before I discuss the analogy, please let me give a brief explanation on why you should focus on keeping your visitors’ eyes on your content.

All Eyes on Your Content: Why It Is Important

Notice that I didn’t use a question (Why is it important?). Instead, I used a firm statement (Why it is important). This is because having your visitors pay attention to your content IS important. It’s just not right to question the fact! Anyway…

Most probably, you already know why you should work on making your visitors or readers focus on your content. Well just let me give a short explanation for the sake of the others.

Your content - it’s what you want your audience to see. It’s where your sales pitch, your call to action, and/or the information you want to share are. You would want to keep your visitors’ attention on this one if you want to meet your site’s goal — to sell something or to give information.

If your visitors’ attention veers away from your content the first time, it’s most likely that it won’t be back. The reason for this is because they did NOT like your content, or they think it doesn’t contain what they need. You then lose the chance to get them do what you want… forever (or for a very long period of time). Of course you wouldn’t want that to happen!

Don’t Lose Any Opportunity. Keep Their Eyes Glued to Your Content!

Doing this might be a little tricky for some, but once you get the hang of it I’m pretty sure it would become easier and easier for you. Remember that once they turn their backs on your content, it won’t be very easy to get them coming back.

First, focus on quality and originality.

Yes I know this had been said many times already. I just can’t stop reiterating it because it’s that important. If your content’s quality suffers, then expect no one to waste even a minute to look at it. I know most of you are bloggers, so let’s have an example that is about blogging.

Let’s take a decent blog post from The University Kid. It’s about increasing RSS feed subscribers, and you can see that it’s got more than 15 comments within two days. That’s not bad for a blog like TUK. Now, because it had attracted a good number of comments, most likely other blogs would rewrite the article (actually, some must have rewritten Jason’s post already). Sure, their blogs now has the good content. Good thoughts, good ideas. BUT it’s merely recycled stuff. Nothing original. Nothing unique. People won’t stay on their blogs even if the post is substantial. Why? It’s just a rewritten post and most likely, the people have already read the original blog post. The goal of getting them read the blog is not met.

Second, create your content with style.

Nah, I’m not talking about fancy font styles or what. I’m talking about your writing style, or how you present your content. The picture above looks good because the photographer carefully thought how he would take the picture. “Will I blur everything? Just the background? Give it a dark background?”

When writing, you also have to consider the style of writing you want to use. Will you be very formal? Personal? Informal? Will you use cuss words? Will you write your opinions, or just factual stuff?

Most of the time the style of writing will make or break your content. If your audience do not like your style, they wouldn’t appreciate your content and *poof*, they’d be gone in seconds. No more chance for your call to action or whatever to reach them!

The style that you should use actually depends on what type of visitors you have. If they’re the really serious and formal ones, then I guess the “professional” style is the way to go. It’s your call — you know your visitors better than I do.

Third, don’t give your audience information overload; don’t give too much details.

Imagine if the image above was too detailed that it showed pixels already. It would be really ugly right? It would be like you couldn’t see anything but little squares. The same thing happens when you put in too much details in your content!

Let’s say that you wrote a 3,000-word article about the Apple iPhone. It’s full of details, from each feature of the iPhone to all known bugs since the first version. It also lists the raw ingredients of the iPhone. The melting point of each component is also there. Do you think that your readers would enjoy it? No. They would feel like they’re being “fed” too much information and they would probably not understand a thing — just like seeing pixelated pictures, you can’t really determine what the picture is!

If that happens, your visitors would stray away from your website. Yet another instance of “opportunity loss”.

Summary

To keep your visitors’ eyes glued to your content, always remember to have the quality and originality present. Also, create with STYLE to really captivate them. Never give too much information, or else they would feel like they’re being given too much unnecessary information and they won’t be able to see your real point.

I want to know what you think about this topic. Do you have any other tips on how to keep your visitors’ eyes stuck on the content?

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