3 Insights to Consider Before Adding More Content to Your Page
Have you ever found yourself squeezing in more buttons, more information, and more images onto a page that’s already fully packed?
Adding a new content might appear as a straightforward solution to enhance user experiences and provide greater opportunities to explore our offerings. However, this additional content often goes unnoticed or, worse, confuses people and drives them away. Before creating that next piece of content, let’s pause and check three essential user insights to make wiser design choices.
1. People don’t scroll.
Here’s the reality: many users don’t venture beyond what’s immediately visible. Despite claims that scrolling has become a natural behavior nowadays, the data shows that we need to be strategic about adding more content to our pages.
Scroll Rate
The average scroll rate on a webpage is 50%, according to ContentSquare’s analysis of 2,942 websites across 9 industries.
This implies a straightforward tradeoff: the average user only views the top half of our content. If we include more content on the page, some of the existing content might go unnoticed by users.
Exposure Rate
Here’s another important fact: half of our users don’t scroll down at all. Even though scroll depth heavily depends on the page types, any content below the fold has significantly fewer viewers.
Content in the third position already loses two-thirds of the viewers. Content at the bottom of the page is likely to be seen by only one or two out of every ten users.
2. People don’t read.
Hold back the urge to explain all the special benefits and useful information in great detail. In numerous user tests, we’ve observed that lengthy paragraphs are simply ignored, no matter how well-crafted they might be.
Text Consumption Rate
Jacob Nielsen found that people only consume about 20% of a webpage’s text content (Nielsen Norman Group, 2008). Keep in mind that this research is from 15 years ago, and consider that we’re living in times when our attention spans are rapidly diminishing.
Skimming Habits
Let’s face it — people won’t read our text. They’re on a hunt for information on the web, and we need to cater to their browsing habits. Employ snappy headings, bullet points, and visuals to steer their attention. Trim the formal language, opt for direct expressions, minimise word count, and provide additional information only when they seek it.
3. People hate more choices.
Choices are empowering, but having too many can turn decision-making into an unpleasant headache. To design a frictionless experience for our users, this is something we must avoid at all costs.
Analysis Paralysis
Remember that gigantic restaurant menu you encountered last time? That’s the feeling you want to avoid on your website.
Having multiple lists of buttons and links only makes users feel uncertain and frustrated, often leading them to leave without making any choices at all.
Conclusion
Enriching the user experience becomes challenging when our users don’t scroll, don’t read, and only look for easier decision making. Yet, here are several strategies that can ensure the effectiveness of our pages when incorporating new content:
- Focus on the primary goal of the page: What’s the most crucial content for achieving that goal? What’s the primary call-to-action to guide users toward? Even with new content additions, keep the focus on the main page objective.
- Understand the trade-offs: What are we giving up by adding another campaign image above the main call-to-action button? How does adding another secondary button impact the conversion rate? Introducing new content will inevitably divert attention from existing elements, so it’s vital to grasp the trade-offs we’re dealing with.
- Test the changes with real users: Check the impact of the newly added content and ensure that users still reach the most valuable content on the page.
There’s a fierce battle to capture that tiny slice of user attention, and it’s happening right within our own page. However, armed with a comprehensive understanding of user behaviours, we can effectively enrich the user experience by optimising the content instead of simply piling on more.
