2.6 seconds: That's the amount of time you're going to spend scanning this site before deciding if it's actually worth your time or not. This post aims to shed some light over the online reading habits or better said; the online skimming habits.
To put it bluntly; people don't actually read online, at least that's what the numbers are telling us. This infographic was developed using two sources; Nielsen data and a study done by Chromebeat and while it might not reflect the reality for every user it's easy to see how it does reflect the majority.
38% of the people that have landed in this post have already left this site
For every 100 people that have arrived at this post organically, 38 have already left without even reading this paragraph. There are only 62 people left and 5% of those won't go beyond this paragraph.
The remaining readers who have gotten this far will only read about 20% of the actual words written in this post.
So; if people don't actually read online content why bother writing it?
The answer to this question can be answered with one single word; Google. Google believes (amongst other things) that the more you write on a blog post about a particular subject the bigger the chances of actually answering the person's queries.
They're not wrong as chances are higher, however the issue with this is that this also tends to create a paradox; the longer and more elaborate your posts are the slimmer the chances of people actually reading it thoroughly.
At this point I presume that there's a good 30 people remaining out of the initial 100 that arrived at this posts organically. Hey guys, thanks for sticking around! Many of you won't actually read this post but will be quick to share the infographic (thanks either way!). That said, there's no point in keeping you guys waiting, you came here to read an infographic about people's online reading habits or to know how people read online so that's what we're gonna deliver.
To view this infographic in full size click on the image so that it can open on a new tab with an 800px width.
To view this infographic in full size click on the image so that it can open on a new tab with an 800px width.
