What makes people tune out?
Just like a real conversation, people can tune out and leave your site and offerings. This is definitely painful for many companies, but it is something recoverable. In this post we’ll go over some basic causes of why this happens and how we work to help you recover from them.
What does “tune out” really mean?
We define this phrase as the progression of not listening or paying attention to something and eventually into ignoring. Tuning out can be consciously chosen, or it can be as a result of a number of uncontrollable factors. Here’s the factors that we’ve discovered in our experience about what causes this behavior in customers and audience members.
People tune out your digital presence because:
They can’t find what they need.
This is usually one of the first things we look for when customers are starting to tune out digitally. In the world of digital, people are looking for information quickly, and the more time it takes for people to find this information, the higher likelihood they will tune you out and leave. You can fix this by: 1) checking the performance of your navigation, 2) checking the performance of Google and site search, 3) testing the usability of your navigation and your content with your customers. While this process may take some time, it rules out many of the other reasons why your audience may be tuning out.
They can’t see your value.
This is the next reason usually why your audience tunes out. As most of digital is built as tools to help others, we need to read and interpret what is presented to us. And based upon what is presented, we make a quick judgment on whether there is value for us to stay or go. You can fix this by: 1) continuously refining your elevator pitch of your product or service to ensure your audience can quickly understand your value, and 2) test your content, marketing, and messaging with potential customers to see and hear what they think the value of your product and service is. Since value is in the eye of the receiver, it is important to make sure that you constantly check on the value of what you provide. Otherwise, people will seek value somewhere else.
They are distracted or lose focus.
Similar to the previous point, when humans have a conversation with another person, they need focus. Focus and attention is a fragile quality, because we can be easily distracted or miss key points about something. When we miss this information, we either attempt to guess and fill in the details ourselves or ask someone to repeat something. In digital, it’s harder to repeat information because generally people look at the information on the screen in front of them, and don’t always remember what came before or after. You can fix this by: 1) asking your audience if the information is useful or relevant to their needs, 2) removing distracting information your audience sees along the way to completing their task, and 3) updating your display logic to make it more clean and clear as to what you offer and what your audience needs to do to work with you.
There is too much effort involved.
People use digital to help accomplish tasks in their life. And we, as humans, get frustrated and upset when we feel like something takes more effort than we expect. And in digital, like life and business, time is money. When things are taking too long, that’s costing your customer and your business money. You can fix this by: 1) test your important business features with your audience to see if it is too hard or long, 2) simplifying each task to its bare minimum (using technology to collect additional information in the background), 3) make instructions more clear to the everyday user, and 4) simplify data collection and the amount of steps it takes for a user to complete their goal. These steps make it much easier for a member of your audience to see you as easy to work with.
The market has changed or evolved.
Competition in real life and in digital is a natural part of the world we live in. Sometimes another service or product comes along that does a better job or provides a different insight on what you do. And that can pull away or make your current users and audience tune out to see what the competition is about. You can fix this by: 1) keeping tabs on what competitors are doing digitally before, during, and after we make something; 2) refine and polish your value proposition and story to the market to ensure you can enter digital as strong as possible; 3) map out as much of the future as you can to help make it easier to add new things, which will allow you to keep pace with the competition.
Their needs have changed.
One of the other ways that we’ve found out that people tune out of digital is due to their life situation. Sometimes people move, lose a job, or no longer need a particular service. Or other times their values have changed and don’t align with yours anymore. Either way, this is not your fault. You can fix this by: 1) building a feedback look with your customers with surveys, focus groups, customer panels, and VIP experiences and 2) use a CRM tool that helps you understand what each individual member of your audience has bought, interacted with, and their preferences and likes. Performing these two tasks allow you to keep tabs on each person who you communicate with digitally.