Can you be thin-sliced in 3-5 seconds?

Searching for stuff is one of the big reasons people use the Internet. And the first thing we all do is thin-slice the results we pull up.

If someone can’t size up what you’ve got in 3-5 seconds, you will instantly lose the attention of a prospective customer or business partner.

We are all skimmers, scanning for new things of interest. And we have no patience if the info we first see is not thin-sliceable, as they say in psychology. Read: easy to size up in 2-3 seconds. Five seconds max.

That means the copy on your web page or in your emails needs to be easy to scan so others can thin slice it fast and see it there’s an initial match…or not.

Rules for making your copy easy to thin-slice:

1. No techno-babble or ANY big words that no one (except people in your company already), understands.

2. No pompous boasts (“We are positioned to be the pre-eminent provider of solutions blah blah blah”)

3. Tell a short story. Your personal, authentic one.

4. Use only words a 13-year old can understand.

5. Do not put up any speed bumps (big words to impress others, scientific mumbo jumbo, links to 15 minute videos or DVDs that no one this early in the game wants to take the time to go see, links to a website that is unfocused and with no human beings in sight, etc.)

6. Give people a way to contact you easily, and include something HUMAN, like your picture.

Treat your web page as your the first date. Keep your clothes one. Stripping down immediately takes all the fun out of it for the other person…mystery gone.

Have you found other speed bumps that get in the way of your thin-slicing someone’s online information – and so you just click on to another site?

Examples of web profiles that are pretty thin-sliceable – click on any name.

Amy

Melissa

Safrina

Barry

Jackie and Virginia