Attention Economics

Modern brain science tells us that attention is not only a zero sum game, it’s a rather limited one at that.

It is this fixed quantity that allows a pickpocket to use a simple misdirection to rummage through our clothing without our noticing — if they use up enough resources on extraneous details, you’re suddenly blind to the important things.

Distractions are everywhere, and they erode our own sense of clarity, purpose and direction as each day progresses.

That goes double online, where alerts, updates, notifications & activity streams can impose themselves upon our awareness in ways that billboards and commercials could only dream of.

This also happens to be where your website lives.

Attention for Sale

When someone pulls up your site, they’re offering up a thin slice of their already marginalized attention. Enjoy it. Respect it. Return the favor by anticipating their intentions and serving them directly, not taxing their attention further with diffuse signals and irrelevant siren songs.

Although a screen may look balanced in isolation during a design review, consider that “balanced” for you while monotasking in Photoshop is different from “balanced” for someone on the third screen of a seven screen process, with 20 other tabs open and a chat client buzzing nonstop.

When in doubt, throw it out. Keep your eye on the ball by keeping the audience’s eyes where they belong - on the task at hand and the road ahead.

How to Strip It Down:

• Before anything else, understand exactly what people are actually coming to your site to do
• Learn both what does and doesn’t play into satisfying each of their intents, and drop what doesn’t
• Straighten the path to successful completion by aligning screens to crucial steps in the workflow, and not vice versa
• Use gentle nudges to get them back on track when they wander off of it, rather than blaring & interruptive alerts
• Save add-on CTAs (e.g. “sign up for the newsletter!”) for when they’re satisfied with what they came to do - this is the opportunity to redirect their attention by building on the goodwill you created

Fin

I hope you enjoyed the article!
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I'm also writing a book on User Onboarding!