Designing for Short Attention Spans: A Guide for businesses here in Michigan
By Software IT Services LLC, Troy, Michigan. Serving Oakland and Macomb counties.
By Software IT Services LLC, Troy, Michigan. Serving Oakland and Macomb counties.
you've about eight seconds to grab someone's attention online. That's it. For a busy Michigan business owner, that means your website has to work fast and make its point clearly.
I build websites for businesses in Troy, Novi, and the surrounding areas. Here's how we design for the way people actually browse the web today.
The top of your homepage, or "hero section," is prime real estate. It needs to immediately answer three questions: Who are you? What do you do? What should I do next? A clear headline, a brief description, and a prominent call-to-action button are essential.
A landscaping company in Sterling Heights, for example, should have a hero section with a great photo of their work, a headline like "Lawn Care and Landscaping in Sterling Heights," and a button that says "Get a Free Estimate."
People don't read websites. they scan them. Break up your content with clear headings, short paragraphs, and bulleted lists. Use bold text to highlight key points. This makes it easy for visitors to find the information they're looking for.
We redesigned a website for a law firm in Royal Oak. By breaking up long paragraphs into scannable sections, we decreased their bounce rate by 30%.
Your website must be fast and easy to use on a phone. If a customer in Ann Arbor has to pinch and zoom to read your content, they're gone. A responsive design that adapts to any screen size is no longer optional.
Page speed is also critical. A site that takes more than a few seconds to load will lose visitors before they even see your content. Optimizing images and using efficient code are key.
A picture is worth a thousand words, especially online. Use high-quality photos and videos of your work, your team, and your location. For a Michigan business, showing real photos of your work in local settings builds trust and authenticity.
Avoid generic stock photos whenever possible. A photo of your actual team in your Troy office is much more effective than a stock photo of a random group of people in a boardroom.
People don't read websites word by word. They scan. Use headings, bullet points, and bold text to highlight key information.
Put your most important message at the top of the page. If someone only reads the first paragraph, they should still understand what you offer.
Long paragraphs are intimidating. Break them up into shorter chunks. Two to three sentences per paragraph works well.
Use images and whitespace to give readers' eyes a break. A wall of text scares people away. Make your content easy to digest.
A slow site loses visitors before they even see your content. Optimize images. Choose fast hosting. Remove unnecessary scripts.
Every second of delay costs you potential customers. We helped a Novi restaurant cut their site load time from six seconds to two. Their online orders tripled.
Getting this right takes focus. Most Michigan businesses try to do too much at once. Pick one thing. Do it well. Then move to the next.
I've seen this work across industries. A Troy retailer focused only on improving site speed for three months. Their conversion rate jumped 40%. Then they tackled SEO. Then email marketing. One at a time.
Is your website designed to capture the attention of today's busy customers? Let's find out. Book a 20-minute website review, and I'll give you three actionable tips to improve your site's performance.