Simplicity is key to delivering an enjoyable user experience (UX) and making our content easily accessible to potential customers. When the UX is enjoyable, visitors are likely to continue engaging with your site. They might move further along your marketing funnel, or intend to return later. Either way, a good UX significantly increases your engagement and conversion rates. So, how do we harness the power of simplicity to keep our content accessible and the UX enjoyable? Read on to find out.
Keep Your Language Simple
Simple language is important to grabbing and maintaining your audience’s attention. Unless your audience is made exclusively of experts and professionals in your niche, it’s best to avoid complicated sentences and technical jargon. Keep your reading level low, but make sure it’s still engaging and informative. Needless to say, it’s easier for people with a high reading level to read at a lower level than it is for those with a low reading level to read at a higher level.
You can use online readability tools such as Readable or SEMrush to see your content’s reading level. These tools can help you simplify words and complicated sentences, so they are more easily accessible to a wide audience.
Capture Attention
Internet users today have a short attention span. Research shows that 55 percent of site visitors skim through content on average without taking the time to read it fully. (Time) This means that your content, including its design, must grab attention early. You have about five seconds to grab a visitor’s attention before they bounce and visit a competitor’s site.
Here’s where simplicity is essential. You can spend much time and effort crafting interesting and educational content. Still, very few people will read it if you don’t manage to grab attention. Instead, lead with your ‘wow’ factor – something about your business, or a specific product or service, that makes you stand out from your competitors and convinces visitors to stay on your site and engage further.
Attention can be captured by the above tip, keeping your language simple. For example, if you want to publish a blog post, make sure you have a short but descriptive headline, an interesting meta-description, and the most important information early in the post, with supportive information backed by evidence as you progress through the blog.
Use Compelling Visual Content
It is useful to add compelling visual content to your blogs. Throughout your blog, break up the text every one or two hundred words with a relevant image. On social media, make sure the blogs and articles you share feature a compelling thumbnail. A relevant and interesting image goes a long way in promoting user engagement.
Infographics are an increasingly popular form of visual content. If you want to share facts and data, infographics are perfect. In your headline, mention that your content features an infographic to see a rise in engagement.
Be Honest and Authentic
Just because attention spans are shorter these days, that does not reflect your audience’s intelligence level. We are more exposed than ever before to advertising and consumer messaging, given the prevalence of social media and mobile phones in our pockets. This information overload naturally makes us pay less attention to each specific attempt at grabbing our attention.
While attention spans are short, consumer awareness is high. Customers want to know that the brands and businesses they engage with are open and transparent about how they operate. Authenticity is key.
‘There’s a link between simplicity and trust. Complex is seen as deliberate, not by accident. A complicated experience in renting a car is not seen as done for the consumer’s benefit, but rather as a way to get one over on them if something goes wrong‘, explains Brian Rafferty, Global Director for Business Analytics and Insights at Siegel+Gale. (Forbes)
When your content is complicated and cluttered, it can seem as though you have something to hide, or that the complication is serving as a distraction to some weak point that would deter customers. If you keep your content simple, not only is it easier for readers to engage, but it is more likely that you will gain their trust.
Be Consistent
Consistency is a vital ingredient in any successful content marketing strategy. Instead of making it hard for customers to fund and enjoy your content by posting inconsistently and irregularly, keep it simple by posting on a consistent schedule.
When you are consistent, your audience knows when to expect your content, and which type of content to expect. Ultimately, this means that those who click on your content are likely to engage further. This is because simple consistency helps you drive higher-quality traffic to your site.
In Conclusion
Above we have outlined five tips regarding the power of simplicity in marketing. How many of these do you already follow? If there is something mentioned above that you haven’t considered, now is the time to add it to your strategy. The above examples of simplicity are cost-effective and easy to implement. Follow the above examples to keep your campaign simple, but more importantly, effective.
