Digital Articles: How People Read Online
How people read articles online - interesting facts and figures.
Continuing on my colleague Lauren’s blog about content marketing last week, I wanted to look at digital articles in more detail.
How do people read articles online? How does it differ from reading an article in print? What are the key considerations?
I have put some of my key findings below.
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1. YOU DO NOT HAVE LONG TO GRAB ATTENTION
According to a Time Magazine article, an average reader online spends only 15 seconds on a specific page of a website. This, of course, is based on one study amongst many others, and as always, averages are just averages. It all depends on the publication, the topic, the audience – in pharma marketing context you are likely to get a more engaged audience that is already interested in the topic (otherwise they would not be on that website) and they often have a reason to look at articles on a specific topic, whether it is to conduct research in that area, find suitable customers, suppliers etc.
2. ONLINE ARTICLES NEED TO BE SHORTER THAN THEIR PHYSICAL COUNTERPARTS
According to ResearchGate it takes approximately 20-30% longer to read an article online compared to reading the same article on paper or within a physical magazine. It’s good to keep this in mind when writing online articles. Ideally, keep online articles a little shorter than you would if the article was published in a print magazine.
3. INCLUDE A “PRINT” BUTTON
Many readers will still today prefer to print out digital articles, and read them in their own time, at their own pace. Make sure you have a print button available for those readers.
4. BE VISUAL
How about images? These are vital to support your online article. Make sure your images are positioned right, of good quality and interesting. Websites with low-quality, poorly sized or generic stock images do themselves disfavour. Almost instantly, the perception of the brand is lowered and the quality of the product or service then comes into question.
5. OFFER NEXT STEPS
Banners are a great way to support your online article and by nature, they very often include a call to action. Such as: “To find out more, click here”. It’s a great idea to use a marketing automation tool, such as SharpSpring which we use on this website, that can track interaction with banners and the article itself of course.
6. DWELL TIME IS APPROX ONE MINUTE
What is a good dwell time on an online article? This depends a lot on the type of article, publication as well as the reader, however, according to some recent studies, an average time to read an article online is around 55 seconds. Having said this, if you have an engaged audience, interested in your topic, it’s not unheard of someone spending even 7 minutes on an online article. It’s good to keep in mind the average attention span of an online reader though when creating your online article and keep their attention by supporting the content with good images as well as effective banners with a call to action etc.
7. HIGHLIGHT KEY WORDS
A lot of people scan a lot more when reading online. Try to highlight keywords to attract your reader’s attention now and then, to ensure they keep reading. Also, be sure to use titles and subtitles for your text sections and break up the paragraphs into short sections. Bullet points are also your friend, along with any presentation styles that present information to visitors quickly and efficiently.
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8. F SHAPED READING PATTERN
According to Nielsen Normal Group who specialise in research-based user experience, readers who are reading content on a web page often follow this pattern in brief: starting with reading horizontally in the upper part of the content area, then down a page a bit and again horizontally but typically for a shorter length than in the top part, followed by scanning the content’s left’s side in a vertical movement. It’s good to keep this theory in mind when planning the content of your article. You can read more about the F shaped reading pattern here.
9. STATISTICS
One of the benefits of publishing an article online is that you can get statistics. You can see how many people have viewed the article. Sometimes you know how many of these views were unique. You can see often how long a person has spent reading the article. You can see if they have clicked on any of the banners etc. This gives invaluable insight into the success of the campaign and also helps to plan for any future campaigns.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, reading online is a different experience from reading in print. In general, people scan more when reading online, spend less time on an online article, to finish reading the article in full they would need 20-30% more time than if the article was in front of them in a printed format.
Think about different reading patterns, such as the F shaped reading pattern online, when planning your online article. And don’t forget that good quality images and banners can make a difference. Last but not least, remember to check those stats at the end of your digital campaign! To read more around this topic, I found an interesting resource here.