It is proven that visual data is processed 60,000 times faster than text. So if a picture is worth a thousand words, why are we still writing copy?
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5. AWHOLELOTOFWORDS
To say that the Information Age has changed the way we receive and process information is like
saying Donald Trump is polarizing. From the expectation of 24/7 brand response to the evolution
of intelligent personal assistants, we expect immediate answers, easily.
That’s the thing with copy; it takes effort. Effort to write and effort to read. And who are we
kidding, no one wants to read any more, or has the attention span to do so. While the average
attention span of a person is 8 seconds, the average attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds.
Add to this the fact that visual data is processed 60,000 times faster by the brain than text and
you have a recipe for the end of long-form copy – especially when it comes to the web. You’re
almost finished. Keep reading for even more content that you aren’t even sure you want or need.
Need more long-winded statistics? Well, here they are. Viewers spend 100% more time on
webpages that have videos on them as apposed to written content. Just one month after the
introduction of Facebook timeline for brands, visual content (consisting of photos and videos)
saw a 65% increase in engagement. But wait, there’s more. 80% of online visitors will watch a
video, while only 20% will actually read content in its entirety. Yet another statistic says that a
webpage with 111 words or less has 49% of the words read. Conversely, on an average webpage
(593 words) only 28% of the words are read.
Sources
3M Corporation, DigitalSherpa, Harald Weinreich, Hartmut Obendorf, Eelco Herder, and Matthias Mayer: “Not
Quite the Average: An Empirical Study of Web Use,” in the ACM Transactions on the Web, vol. 2, no. 1 (February
2008), article #5, Simply Measured
