How long do you have to snag your reader’s attention before you lose them? Say it with me: ten seconds or less. We’ve had this drilled into our heads, and great designers know what keeps people reading and what doesn’t. But what hasn’t been learned nearly so well is that your customer’s online attention is not only short, but also very narrow.

Usability guru, Jack Nielson, explains in a recent Alertbox Column that most users focus only on what interests them or what they expect will give them the answers that they need while ignoring the other content. Known as “Tunnel Vision,” this phenomenon can make the difference between click-throughs and deleted messages.

Let’s consider an example. You design a newsletter advertising your website’s 20 percent off sale. You include a headline, an image, a block of text that includes a coupon code, and a call to action that says “Shop Now.” Nielson’s usability research suggests that if you haven’t stated the coupon code in the headline or included it as part of the call to action, many subscribers won’t see it. It’s a phenomenon similar to banner blindness, where readers ignore portions of the screen that they think aren’t essential to the overall message. If the coupon code is necessary in order to receive the savings, you’ll need to follow a few design tips in order to keep it within your subscribers’ field of vision.

• Put important elements near each other.
  If your image shows sale items and information, try putting the coupon code within the image or as the image caption. If subscribers must read through a block of text in order to find the coupon code, they may miss it altogether.

• Include essential info in the link.
  People tend to focus on click-able elements within an email design. Your call to action button and any nearby links should contain the essential information you’re trying to communicate. So instead of using a call to action that says “Shop Now,” try “Save 20% with coupon code FALL2012.”

• Test with actual users.
  Designers have difficulty recognizing usability problems with their designs because they already know where the important information is and their eyes gravitate toward it. They might not recognize where tunnel vision might occur for the average subscriber. Creating simple A/B split tests can point out problems that keep your readers from noticing the important stuff amongst everything else.

Tunnel vision means that users often don’t see things that are right in front of them. By grouping important elements together and putting essential information where readers tend to look anyway, you can boost your click-through rates and ultimately, your conversions.

When was the last time you went to a website and thought to yourself, “Wow, this copywriting is really fantastic! Look at all the bullet points!” Yeah, me neither. That’s because good copywriting is like the lighting guy at a concert: invisible, but essential for showcasing the main attraction (your information). Bad copywriting crashes the party by jumping in front of the information and hollering “Look at me! I’m making it harder for you to find what you want!” Writing effective online copy is all about identifying the party-crashers and escorting them from the premises so you can showcase the main attraction.

Party Crasher #1: Complicating the Message

In any given industry, you have jargon, technical terms, and insider idioms that you use when communicating with others in the business. If you bombard you website audience with these things, however, you’re making it harder for them to understand what you mean. So don’t make them get a realtor’s license in order to understand your real estate website. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

Party Crasher #2:  Grammar By the Book

I’m a firm believer in good grammar and spelling. However, with online writing you get to break a few rules—discreetly. It’s okay, and even desirable, to use sentence fragments, begin sentences with “And” or “But,” use slang, and write in first person. The goal is to be conversational, talking with your readers rather than at them.

Party Crasher #3: Disguising Your Main Points

You’ve got fabulous information that your target audience needs to know. But if you disguise it as a long, boring paragraph, they’ll never get around to reading it. Show off your main points with bullets, numbered lists, and bolding.

Party Crasher #4: Becoming a Slave to Keywords

Keywords are an essential SEO tool, and every website needs them. But when your copywriting becomes a slave to your keywords, it can sound stilted and disjointed. Effective keyword density generally hovers between 1% and 5%. Keywords should appear in titles and headings and should sound natural when used in your copy.

Party Crasher #5: Robotic Style

Remember the computer from the original Star Trek series? For any non-trekkie people out there, it spoke in monotone, sounded robotic, and communicated only the essentials. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, however, the computer had acquired a personality. Now she was feminine, warm, and personable. That’s the difference you want to achieve in your writing style: the difference between “it” and “she.” Let your personality shine through in your writing.

When you simplify your message, write conversationally, highlight your main points, use keywords effectively, and develop personality in your writing, you effectively escort the party-crashers off-stage and allow your fabulous information to enjoy the limelight. It is, after all, what the audience came to see.

Is your writing full of jargon and technical-ese? Most writers, myself included, have been guilty of boring readers to death with a hard-to-follow style, just for the sake of sounding intelligent. Unfortunately, in the lightening-paced realm of the blogosphere, readers have become less and less forgiving of such a mistake. But the good news is that you can grab reader attention and communicate your message in a memorable way by paying attention to the new rules of writing for an online audience.

Rule #1: Be a real person.

Share experiences, talk in first person, and let readers see not only your strengths but also your mistakes—especially if you learned something from them that’s worth sharing. Think through every post and determine your message and main points before you just dash off something for the sake of having new content.

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