What’s Behind Door #1? Shoes!

Here’s a research ditty from Daniel Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness that speaks to our brief attention spans. This could have been a hidden episode of Candid Camera.

A researcher posed as somebody looking for a building on a campus. He stopped a passer-by and as they were conferring over a campus map they were interrupted by two other researchers posing as workers carrying a door. The “workers” walked between the researcher and the person. As the “workers” passed, the original researcher crouched behind the door and snuck away, while a second researcher swapped places with him. The first and second researchers were of different heights and builds and had different voices, hair, and clothes. In this experiment, most people failed to notice that the researcher had completely changed into a new person.

Gilbert’s point is not that we don’t notice things. We do, or we would have all been eaten generations ago. The point is that we make instant, and often unconscious, decisions about what deserves our attention. In brief, you have precious little time to connect with customers.

Want attention? Here’s what you have to do:

1) Target your message: Do not try to include a little something for everybody. Know specifically who you are trying to reach and what they want to hear.

2) Optimize your Web site: For example, you have four seconds to connect with online shoppers according to Akamai Technologies, commissioned through JupiterResearch. Longer than that, they will not come back. Drop your fascination with splash pages; they waste time.

3) Organize your content: Give customers the option to scan information. Use catchy and appropriate headlines and section headers. Make sure your Web site is user-friendly. If you organize it, they will come back.

4) Be brief.

5) Please the right people: Too many companies cram too much information into their marketing, often because they are more interested in pleasing company folk than customers. In this case, forget your company priorities. It may be your marketing dollars, but it is not about you. Avoid coworkers’ input. Get in your customers’ shoes. Seek your customers’ advice. Follow their behaviors. Don’t make your boss happy. Make your customers happy. Make it all about them, and they will make it about you.