Persuasion is Plural
Earn attention before you use it.
Persuasion is never one thing. It’s at least two: first, persuading someone to pay attention, and second, persuading them that your thing is worth their time, money, or effort.
Most marketers and designers focus their energy on the second kind of persuasion as if it can stand alone, crafting perfect messaging and assets about their product or service. But you can’t solve the second problem without fully understanding the first. The harder challenge — the one that requires deeper thought, more work, and must come first — is persuading someone to pay attention at all.
Through the Noise, Not Over It
Noise is the default now. But the solution isn’t volume. You can’t blare your way to someone else’s understanding.
So let’s consider the reality. Because everyone is being inundated with information all the time, rejection is going to be the default. It’s a survival mechanism, and it’s a good one. A mind that has reached its saturation point will instinctively reject new information before it can even weight its value. This aligns with a core principle in education: 90% of teaching is review; 10%, new information.
Repetition, then, is essential. But it’s not the only solution. Repetition alone is volume; repetition with refinement is finding the optimal frequency to cut through the noise.
Consider what happens when a burdened brain encounters new information. Within less than three seconds, the mind employs a heuristic evaluation at a subconscious level, asking:
- What is this?
- Is it relevant to me?
- What should I do next?
Because this is such a rapid and subconscious process, these questions are answered almost entirely through visual information — often before a single sentence is actually read as it was written to be. If the evaluation is productive, that last question — what should I do next? — will lead to a decision to pay attention not to pay for a product or service.
Think about that. Your audience has already decided whether to engage with your message before fully engaging with it. The battle for attention is won or lost before your carefully crafted copy ever has a chance to do its work.
Quantified Attention = Qualified Focus
After that, the numbers don’t get much better. 80% of the people you persuade to pay attention still won’t go any further than scanning your message. 20% — at best — will read it all. Couple that with the reality that while the average person is capable of reading about 250 words per minute, they almost never choose to do so.
But copywriting isn’t futile. This almost-Catch-22 indicates how important design is to persuasion. We have to be exceedingly careful with our words, and even more with how we present them. We’re not going to change this behavior; we can only work with it.
First, consider the design of the message. If 80% of your audience will only ever scan it and only 20% will read it in full, then it must be designed to suit 100% of its use. What does that mean? It means communicating the most given the least amount of attention. Here’s a simple example: Headlines. A common use of a headline is to set up the copy that comes next. But that only serves the person who reads past a scan. What we must do is reverse that so that a scanner reads the conclusion, not the introduction. In other words, think of your headlines as the TL;DR of your page, not its scaffolding. Make your visual hierarchy tell the story that most people won’t read.
Second, be brief. Like, really, really brief. When I share the bit about people being able to read 250 words per minute (and almost never doing that), I use it to frame my recommendation to my clients that a marketing-focused web page not exceed 150 words. That’s thirty seconds of reading material! But if you can do it in half, do it in half. forces us to identify what’s truly important and meets the audience at a realistic expectation of attention.
Quantified attention equals qualified focus. That’s a good thing.
Focus is Necessary, Deep Focus is Discretionary
I landed on another helpful framing recently: Those who scan should be equipped to make an accurate conclusion. Those who read further should find validation in their conclusion. In other words, the deep read should be rewarding, but not necessary to take action.
This is why visual design isn’t decoration — it’s the foundation of persuasion. This is why information architecture isn’t just organization — it’s the gateway to understanding. And this is why clarity isn’t just a virtue — it’s a necessity. In a world of infinite content and finite attention, the most persuasive thing you can be is clear. And, for the designers reading this, making sure that anything we do visually functions as a support to communication, not as a decoration.
The next time you’re crafting a message, don’t labor too long without thinking about how to earn their attention first. After all, the most compelling argument in the world means nothing if no one stops to hear it.
Written by Christopher Butler on
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