How consumer habits changed the web

Posted on Friday June 29, 2018

The average web user's attention span gets shorter every day. People don't want to spend hours sifting through a website to find the information they need; they want it as soon as the page loads. To keep up with the times businesses have drastically changed how they develop their websites.

Bite-sized content While there are several elements that make an effective website, the most successful ones offer 'snackable' content. These are bite-sized chunks of information that give visitors everything they need to decide whether a website is worth their time. Microsoft's homepage, for instance, gets straight to the point, promoting each of their services with one line of text and links to more details.

Besides accommodating short attention spans, concise content is easier to share on social media and increases brand awareness.

The point is, if you're working on your website, make sure you're not overloading visitors with walls of text. You can expand on products and services on separate pages, but even those need to be broken up into digestible segments.

Loading time How fast a page loads is a crucial part of a website's user experience. If it takes over three seconds to load, users will click away and go to a more responsive site. This is why modern websites optimize their content for speed and responsiveness.

High-resolution photos and videos slow down a website, especially if users are on mobile devices and networks. One way around this is by implementing mobile-friendly image formats that are quick and easy to load.

Another popular solution among website producers is Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). This solution creates a stripped-down, mobile-optimized version of websites so images and videos render quickly.

Personalization Today's internet users also want tailor-made experiences whenever they visit a site. They want the website to know what they're looking for ahead of time so they don't have to spend time digging for the information they need. Websites like Netflix, for example, use analytics to recommend movies and television shows a user might like based on their viewing history.

While most businesses don't have access to the same resources as Netflix, they can utilize Google Analytics to understand the people visiting their website and use the insights to customize the content accordingly.

Some websites even ask what visitors are looking for to direct them to pages where the content is customized to their needs.

If you want to increase customer engagement and page visits, make sure you're doing all these things with your website. Web trends can also change at any moment, so stay tuned to our blog to know about the latest developments.