How Content Is Read: How Publishers Can Increase the Retention Time for Their Formats
Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash
People’s attention spans are decreasing continuously. The way they concentrate in relation to their reading behaviour has also changed. The consumption of digital media is a strong factor for this development. As a consequence of this, consumers are able to screen and compare content more quickly. Furthermore, online content is generally read differently than printed texts. How can publishers use this information to increase the retention time for their different formats? An article by Naomi Owusu, CEO of Tickaroo.
Know-how: How websites are read
In this internet age, people hardly read an article word for word. A study from 2006 shows that most of the time people use a F-shaped reading pattern. What does this mean? First readers will read the top line of the text and then jump down the page to where they read another line. Towards the end of the article they only look at the first words of the lines.
While reading styles like this are becoming more commonplace, it’s unthinkable to read a book this way. Another study presents a similar observation, namely that the retention time on websites is barely longer then 10 seconds. When publishing articles on the internet, it’s even more difficult to make the text exciting enough that readers are captivated, read the complete article, and also stay on the website.
More attention: What news coverage can learn from the F-pattern
By understanding the F-Pattern, reporters can deduce that the majority of readers won’t read the whole text - especially not word for word. In order to awaken the reader’s interest, the most important information has to be in the first two paragraphs. Here, it’s important to remember the “principle of decreasing importance”, which means that the most important content should be at the beginning while other details should appear in the lower part of a text. Since the readers notice the first words of a paragraph, it’s also best if paragraphs, subheadings and headwords are informative and significant words. This way publishers can grasp their audience’s attention and address reading interests.
Reader at first sight: Multimedia-based reading experience counts
The presentation of the website plays a major role in ensuring users stay on the page and whether they engage with the content or not. Therefore it’s crucial that the page have an appealing visual structure. It’s also important that the colour design is well-defined, the typography is legible and there is topic-appropriate visual content. It’s important not only to provide text, but rather a multimedia-based experience designed to attract the audience. For this reason it’s recommended to choose headings, the main picture and other details that awaken the desire to read more. A good option are Giffygraphics, which are a combination of GIFs and infographics.
It’s the intrinsic value that counts: “Content is king”
Without appealing content, even a perfectly structured website is useless. To gain the readers’ attention and increase their retention time, the whole text, just as the individual sentences, shouldn’t be too long. Furthermore, technical jargon should be avoided, as well as nested sentences. It’s also advisable to divide the text into paragraphs so that there is a new section for each point that is being made. Moreover, objectivity and the usage of active verbs are advantageous for making a text interesting. Important content can also be visually marked, for example, by printing some words in bold or italicising them. Links to different articles or websites can also have an influence on the attractiveness of content, but only if their inclusion benefits the reading experience.
Invite to stay: Increase retention time with live content
For publishers, the website’s retention time is the measure of all things. Advertising providers also have to learn to adapt to this development. Live content tools will increase in popularity because of the strong potential for the improvement of user experience and the increase of retention times. They provide users with succinct and summarised content in real-time and satisfy the need for current and to-the-point information. In combination with conventional articles, the consumers’ interest becomes aroused this way.
Nowadays it can be more challenging to find interesting content for readers. Well written text is often not enough. It needs to have more motivating characteristics so as to motivate a reader to create a relationship with the content. Textual and multimedia content have to fit together to form a perfect whole. Live reporting can do this: liveblogs, as well as appropriate advertising, ensures that once the reader is on the website, they stay there.
