I made the last post about the mental state of your typical web prospect. Go read it first, if you haven’t already and then come back to this article.
If you want to make money from your website (either directly or indirectly), you must only assume that you are dealing with uninterested, zombie – even if they typed in your keywords.
Assume anything else and you will achieve less than what you have achieved, or may be nothing at all.
A typical television surfer has an attention span of approximately 7 seconds. That means, the advertiser has got less than 7 seconds to grab and hold the interest of the person sitting in front of the box, failing which, the channel is simply be changed at the flick of “the thing” or, the zombie keeps tuned off, even though he is looking at the television.
The job is easier on the web. You got 2 seconds more to sell. The addictive nature of web browsing leaves us with an attention span of nine seconds – the same as a goldfish.
That’s it fellas ! 9 Seconds.
How you use the first nine seconds is the make or break thing. In these nine seconds, you got to get the attention of the zombie and jolt it to normal a state of conscious attentiveness.
The first step of all salesmanship/marketing is to get people’s attention. Examples would include dressing yourself up as a penguin and jumping in front of the every passing prospect, using proper headlines, focusing on content you present above the first fold etc
It is any method, technique, trick or basically anything to get attention. You can’t do anything to sell people if you don’t have their attention.
Here is a step-by-step experiment:
1) Buy a stop watch
2) Ask a volunteer to sit in front of you and look at your website
3) Give him exactly 9 seconds
4) Ask him what he understands about your business.
Now, Don’t jump off the building with the result!
Now you need to keep modifying the website or the landing pages until all you want to your prospect to know and understand about your business, is communicated in less than 9 seconds.
Happy selling!
-Mukul Gupta
