Shrinking Attention Spans Are… Wait, What Was I Saying?

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of what you considered a riveting conversation only to find the person on the other end staring off in the distance, or worse, absorbed by their mobile device? “I’m sorry, what was that?” they’d mumble, eyes still glued elsewhere.

No, it’s not necessarily you or your story—though you probably shouldn’t talk about your latest visit to the dentist. All jokes aside, the proof is in that our attention spans are shrinking.  In 2000, the average American attention span was 12 seconds. In 2013, eight seconds.  That’s one second shy of a goldfish’s attention span of nine seconds.

But who can blame us? We’re trapped in a 24-hour news and advertising cycle. Our brave new world of media saturation has produced a generation of channel surfers—people click through content to absorb massive amounts of information as fast as they can, which is why we pick and choose what we want and ignore the rest.  Digital gluttony, if you will. They don’t want to wait for information, let alone exhaust themselves by reading something longer than 140 characters.

Before mobile technology, we had to wait until we reached a computer to get information.  And before THAT we waited for the nightly news or morning newspaper. But today, people expect everything to be loaded and ready for viewing instantly.

In fact, studies have shown that 32% of consumers abandon slow websites within one and five seconds. A one second delay in page load time can result in 11% fewer page views, 16% decreased customer satisfaction and 7% lost conversions.

So, how do you reach people?  What can you possibly do to reel them in? The answer is pretty simple and saves you time: incorporate short and punchy content or, even better, compelling visuals. It’s hard enough to make a message stand out, let alone resonate.  If you haven’t already, it’s time to embrace this phenomenon … and move on.