The average reader takes about a half second to read one word.
The average shopper looks at a physical or digital sign, on average, about 3 seconds.
Brain science studies have proven that the average attention span has dwindled from 12 seconds to eight in the last twenty years. That’s eight seconds when you’re talking to them. A sign has less than three. Even worse, psychologists tell us that anxiety reduces attention span. During our days of COVID, research has shown that the cumulative stress of our times is impacting all of our abilities to focus. And so our time spent with marketing targeted to us is also dwindling.
In this much more technological and complicated world, we’re inundated with messages. But too often traditional marketing techniques remain, making company messages too long or too complicated to capture attention in the changing world.
While you can’t reduce the stress levels of your customers, you can affect your branding and marketing to cater to a changing marketplace. Here are some recommendations:
- Readability is paramount. If anything about the font you’ve selected or the logo design or branding requires your customer to figure it out or spend time with it to interpret it, you’ve failed. You literally have them for just a few seconds. Easy straight-forward readability. Try to avoid to much mix of letters and numbers, as in words, dates, and percentages announcing a sale. That all requires more effort and time for the brain to process. Simple. Punchy. Straightforward.
- Let the image tell the story. Nothing works better than perfectly placed visuals. Using visual communication to speak your words for you is your very best bet. But visual communication is a skill and an art that takes education and practice to develop. Lean on a designer for this. They can help target your audience with the most impactful image to speak your message for you.
- Less is more. While this seems like it should go without saying, it’s still worth calling out. With only seconds, and with readability paramount, you just don’t have the audience bandwidth to say too much. Less is always better.
- Keep it fresh. If the words are different but the layout is the same as your last ad campaign, your customer remembers and the brain skips over it. “I’ve already seen that.” is happening. Keep your designs fresh and eye catching while maintaining the readability mentioned above.
- Adjust to fit the medium. Your ad or message cannot be the same in physical signage as in digital signage. Are you scrolling a message digitally? How long does it take? If it requires your customer to stand there and watch it, you can be assured in advance that they aren’t. Movement in digital images can be eye catching, but also distracting, especially if they break the rule #1 readability rule. Work with a designer to make sure your ad is built correctly within your channel medium.
