“The Matrix is a system Neo, that system is our enemy. When you’re inside you look around, what do you see? Businessman, Teachers, Lawyers, Carpenters the very minds of the people we’re trying to save. But until we do, those people are still a part of that system. That makes them our enemy. You have to understand most of these people are not ready to be unplugged, and many of them are so emerged so hopefully dependant on the system that they will fight to protect it….We’re you listening to me Neo?…. or we’re you looking at the women in the red dress?” -Morpheus
This scene from the Matrix was one of many classic memorable moments that stuck with me not only as a fan of great movies, but a fan of marketing. You can read into that quote by Morpheus (played by Laurence Fishburne) even more than just the obvious eye catching marketing lure of color or sex appeal of a beautiful woman. Morpheus talks about the Matrix and how the people are so intune, so attached to the Matrix that they have become slaves to it. If you think about it, and as depressing as it may be, that’s very true for how modern society views the web. Bored browsing and lazy scanning of articles opposed to reading them has become second nature, even a way of life. Website browsing or “readers” are now experienced web surfers. Readers scan articles faster, they search the web faster and dismiss what they don’t want almost equally as fast.
People refuse to read and it can be extremely frustrating with trying to capture attentions and sell a product or service online. I can tell you as a web designer that has built pages geared to convert sales, even if you make things incredibly easy and straight forward people will refuse to read. I have made bold colorful easy three step payment processes and still people will just scan the page on where to click next without reading what’s going to happen next.
One trick that I find that works extremely well is the power of leading eyes and the color red.
Question: Did you skip the first part of my article and start reading right here? Why is that? Was it because Scarlett Johansson is looking directly at the start of this paragraph (Mobile Theme alignment not the same, but still actively effective).
If you can set up your page in such a way you can direct the readers starting point basically using a person’s eyes as an arrow to where they need to begin to read.
This trick doesn’t always work, but studies have shown that when a reader scans an article they typically look at the pictures first and the eyes of the person in the picture to where they are looking. This tactic can sometimes work if you have an advertisement banner in the sidebar of your WordPress site. This doesn’t always translate into clicks but it can work towards a starting point for where a person should look to first on your page.
These types of advantages allow you to set up your page the way you want readers to go through the process of scanning your website. One of my favorite bloggers is Peep Laja from ConversionXL.com who specializes in helping websites maximize conversion ratio and improve bounce rate.
Blogging Tips to consider when creating content or a sales page:
- An image is worth 1000 words, so don’t stray away from adding color or interesting images to help make your point. At the same time we don’t want go overboard, adding too many images can distract the person for wanting to bother reading anything all. Also make sure your images are on topic with what you hope to accomplish. Having two beautiful women in my article here would definitely miss the mark if I was trying to sell you something that didn’t apply to possibly picking up girls or something of that nature.
- Avoid negative space. Empty white space can sometimes convince readers that the article is over and that they need to move on. Make sure that you continue leading the reader to where they need to move to next as the attention span of people nowadays is incredibly low.
- Articles need to be short and sweet but to the point. I found the ideal word count is in the 700 to 900 range to maximize the “ain’t nobody got time for that” burden readers seem to have when reading content.
