Gift Focus - Jan/Feb 2018 (Issue 105)

If like me, you’re ‘getting on a bit’, you’ll remember a time way before the Internet, online shopping, video surveillance on every street corner and the predominance of social media. Back then, attention spans were vastly longer than today, because there was less visual stimuli, less data to assimilate, less demand on our waking hours. Declining attention spans If you keep abreast of the latest research, you’ll know the influence of social media especially is making everyone less focused, more data hungry and less able to tolerate any piece of information that isn’t immediately understandable. Research from 2015 suggests that attention spans have dropped severely over the past 25 years to around nine seconds (some would say even this is being overly generous with the Twitter generation!) http://goo.gl/JIEtG7 , but despite later doubts being put on this research, there’s no doubt we are all busier and tasked with more to cram into each waking hour. Don’t forget, we’re not just talking about teenagers here – the vast array of information available to all of us constantly on the web is re-writing and interfering with the capabilities of our brains, social media combined with smart phone usage being particularly influential in this respect. We’ve all heard the phrase ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, never more is this true than when trying to trade online in an age when every second has so many demands on our attention. This brings me neatly round to writing about website imagery and why every online retailer needs a clear understanding of the modern, ‘connected generation’ psyche in order to get the very best results. The data hungry generation The average age of smartphone users is growing, we’re all becoming increasingly data hungry https://goo.gl/JKSCJw. Even the traditional 55+ year purchasers of old who used to gravitate to a ‘bricks and mortar’ store are discovering – and now heavily using – online shopping. Online and especially the psychology of imagery Intelligent Retail’s David Fairhurst explains how to capture the imaginations of your customers in an age of declining attention spans giftfocus 195 retail technology