Ever wonder if your attention span might be less than that of a goldfish? Well, Microsoft has been wondering the same.
In this study, they took 2000 partipants… and measured their attention spans. The results were a little concerning, to say the least. But, something to really consider when you’re building a website focused on making money online!
Microsoft’s study found that out of the 2000 participants, the average attention span was….. 8 seconds….. which is 1 second less than a goldfish. Crazy, right?
This is down from 12 seconds about 15 years ago; but still, 12 second attention spa…. oh hey look, a bird!
Where were we? Oh! Right.
That all said, the study also found that people’s abilities to multi-task has improved over the same duration of time, which is good, I suppose.
Want to know whyyy these changes have happened? Microsoft attributes it entirely to the “mobile revolution”.
People’s addictions to cellphones has decreased their attention spans. I’m not too sure what to think about that, and it might be due to my addiction to my cellphone.
During a similar study by the National Centre for Biotechnology Information and the National Library of Medicine (that’s a mouthful), they found that roughly 79% of American’s “dual-screen” by using their mobile phone while watching TV – which could be attributed to our heightened ability to multi-task.
To an internet marketer, this study tells me that I have under 8 seconds to grab someone’s attention.
This means that I have to effectively use CTAs or reader’s won’t convert.
This means that the first sentence is that much more important.
8 seconds is a really short time, but at least we know what we’re working with!
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