With most traffic surf systems you will have between 10 and 35 seconds to catch your visitors attention. Less if they are called away from the computer for some reason.

If you can catch their attention you can keep a visitor at your site for a reasonable amount of time, maybe even get them to come back.

So what can you do to get the most out of what is a tiny window of opportunity?

1 - Space above and beyond AKA above the fold.

What they don't see doesn't attract them.

The amount of you first page that fits into a 800 X 600 browser window with two to three tool bars and the added overhead of a surf bar is not all of your site but it is all most people will see.

So tip number one is: Make the most of your top section. Don't use up too much (if any) with adverts or big bulky titles. While these are good and look very nice generally it is your content the user is there for. Keep it fresh, topical and good looking for it is this that will draw you visitor into you site to find out more.

2 - Try not to OD!

Too much tat is still tat

A common mistake that we have all made is to OD on neat little bits that flash and scroll and move and have bright garish colours*.

This is fine but you run the risk of offending the eye-balls of lesser mortals (not to mention visitors). If you really over do it you site or blog will look amazing like a modern work of art and be completely unusable and largely unread.

3 - Snappy Dressing

The power of the Head Line

When a visitor comes to your site the will judge it's content on the first five words they notice. This includes Titles and up to the first three words of any paragraph.

Once they have formed an impression they will read up to ten words before they click away.

And you thought traffic surfing was a hard window to work with. So what is the answer?

Headlines: the hero of the day.

Use short snappy headlines for all posts and you will increase the chance that someone will read the first paragraph.

That first paragraph should tell the user everything they need to know about what to expect within your post. It should have at most three short sentences.

Additionally people are lazy and will more likely read short paragraphs than long.

Newspapers have been playing on this for almost as long as they have existed.

* I'm from the UK we spell things differently to those in the US.

¶ 8:54 AM