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Nobody will read your website content. They do this

You've got three to five seconds. Nobody is reading your carefully crafted paragraphs.

Play the video: Nobody will read your website content. They do this

Rule number four. Nobody will read it.

Most people take three to five seconds to decide whether to stay on your website. They don’t read your carefully crafted paragraphs. They land, scan the headlines and look for something about their problem. If they don’t find it straight away, they leave and don’t come back.

Keep that rule in your head whenever you write anything for your website and it changes how you write. Shorter sentences. Bullet points instead of long paragraphs. Headlines that say exactly what problem they solve. The important stuff at the top, not buried. Diagrams or infographics instead of essays. If something matters, make it impossible to miss: big text, bold headlines, clear headings.

Your job isn’t to impress your old English teacher. It’s to turn the people who land on your website into paying customers, in the three to five seconds you’ve got. Start with the headline. How to write a homepage headline covers it.

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Read the full transcript

Rule number four, nobody will read it. This rule will change everything about how you create content on your website because most people are spending three to five seconds deciding whether they want to stay on your website when they first land on it. They're not reading your carefully crafted paragraphs, they're scanning for what they need to find. Here's what actually happens when somebody comes to your website. They land on your page, they scan the headlines, they look for something relevant to their problem, and if they don't find it immediately within three to five seconds, they're gone and they never return.

So, when you're writing anything on your website, and I do mean anything, remember this rule. Nobody will read it. And when you have this rule in your head, it forces you to think about writing shorter sentences, using bullet points instead of long paragraphs, making your headlines damn obvious about what problem they solve, put important stuff first at the top of the website instead of buried in lots of content, and using diagrams or infographics instead of writing essays or novellas. If something is important, make it impossible to miss on your website because they're going to scan it. Big text, bold headlines, clear headings.

Start writing headlines that solve problems. Your job isn't to impress your old English teacher, your job is to convert the visitors, the people who land on your website, into paying customers in the first few seconds of landing on your website, because that's all you have, three to five seconds.

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