A Conductor study finds that the more explicit a headline is as to the reader takeaway, the more the headline resonates.
The new digital economy has created a wealth of new opportunity for modern marketers across search, social networks, and digital channels. Digital marketing has brought with it the opportunity to create leads, drive engagement, and drive sales at costs far less than traditional offline channels.
In some ways, though, online marketing has been victimized by its own success. Viral media site Upworthy's co-founder Peter Koechley describes it this way:
"When we look at the media landscape, we see there being more of a demand problem than a supply problem — how do you get people to care about important stuff amidst the avalanche of content we all face each day?"
With the growth of online marketing, both the channels and volumes of content competing for our readers' attention has exploded, making it increasingly challenging to stand out. Consider the following statistics:
- Explosion in content competing for readers' attention: A Day in the Internet shows that 2 million blog posts, 294 billion emails, and 864 thousand hours of video are created daily. Each day also brings 400 million tweets.
- 80% of readers never make it past the headline: According to some sources, on average, eight out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only two out of 10 will read the rest.
- Traffic can vary by as much as 500% based on the headline: According to Koechley, tests show that traffic to content at Upworthy can vary by as much as 500% simply because of the headline. "The headline is our one chance to reach people who have a million other things that they're thinking about, and who didn't wake up in the morning wanting to care about feminism or climate change, or the policy details of the election," he said.
Research the best keywords for your headline
Measuring which headlines resonate with readers
Given how significant a headline can be to click-through rate in both search and social online channels, here at Conductor we decided to test different headline types to determine those that resonate most with readers. Although it would be interesting to measure this by analyzing actual click traffic (and we know that there can be a difference between how respondents say they will click and how they actually do), it can be difficult to precisely test by getting multiple headlines for the same article in front of readers. Taking the survey approach also gave us the ability to gather demographic data about respondents to determine if headline preferences differed across specific groups.
To start, we analyzed a large sample set of headlines across multiple online publications and social networks to determine if there are general ways in which headlines are written. We determined there to be five high-level headline types:
- Normal (Ways to Make Drinking Tea More Delightful)
- Question (What are Ways to Make Drinking Tea More Delightful?)
- How to (How to Make Drinking Tea More Delightful)
- Number (30 Ways To Make Drinking Tea More Delightful)
- Reader-Addressing (Ways You Need to Make Drinking Tea More Delightful)
Using actual headlines from multiple content sources including BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, and the Conductor blog as starting points, we showed respondents headlines written in each style for three different articles and asked them to select the headline that resonated most.
BuzzFeed is onto something with its headline choices
Before we dig into the findings, I want to draw your attention to content aggregator BuzzFeed and its quirky CEO, Jonah Peretti. A recent New York Magazine profile of Peretti describes how he began a study of what makes content resonate after accidentally creating a viral sensation as a graduate student at MIT (and later as part of the team that created the Huffington Post). "I've spent over a decade thinking about how ideas spread," he says.
Close analysis of the front page of buzzfeed.com shows a number of things. First, what in the world is a boozy milkshake, and how could there be 26 different ways to make one? Second, and more to the point, they use ‘number' headlines a lot. In fact, at the time of this writing, every other headline on the front page is in number format:
Turning now to our findings: As you have probably guessed by now, "number" headlines resonated most by far — a full 15% more than the second place "reader-addressing." (More on what we think this means in a bit.)
Looking at headline preferences across gender groups, we can see that females were even more predisposed to "number" headlines than males. Interestingly, across all the questions we asked, this was the only one in which we saw any significant difference among demographic groups:
Superlatives: Either hit me with it or understate it
Next, we tested respondent tolerance for superlatives in a headline. We showed them several different headlines that had between 0 and 4 superlatives in the headline and asked them to pick their favorite:
- The 27 Ways to Train a Dog (0 superlatives)
- The 27 Best Ways to Train a Dog (1 superlatives)
- The 27 Best Ways Ever to Train a Dog (2 superlatives)
- The 27 Best Ways Ever to Train a Perfect Dog (3 superlatives)
- The 27 Best and Smartest Ways Ever to Train a Perfect Dog (4 superlatives)
The data shows more than half of respondents (51%) like the understated approach, preferring to click headlines with 0-1 superlatives. Interestingly, tolerance for superlatives tailed off until the headline packed with 4 superlatives, which had a full quarter of respondents stating they preferred it. These findings suggest readers prefer an understated approach or that the author shoot for the stars and tell the reader in strong terms why their content is worth reading, but the middle ground is to be avoided.
One out of five respondents don't seem to mind if you YELL AT THEM
Next we surveyed respondents about their headline capitalization preferences. Several headlines with distinct capitalization styles were shown to respondents and they were asked to select the one that resonated the most with them:
- The 5 steps to prepare for the impending zombie apocalypse (lower case)
- THE 5 STEPS TO PREPARE FOR THE IMPENDING ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE (capitals)
- The 5 Steps to Prepare for the Impending Zombie Apocalypse (sentence case)
- No preference
The data showed that respondents strongly preferred sentence case, but, surprisingly, 1 out of 5 respondents preferred the more authoritative capital letters. As described above, there was little difference in responses across demographic groups. While we don't recommend that content creators suddenly start writing their headlines in all capitals, it was interesting to see that a significant segment preferred that style. Otherwise, the group overwhelmingly preferred traditional sentence case.
Write headlines that leave no ambiguity
Although a follow-up study that thoroughly examines why certain headline types resonate over others would add greater insight for marketers and content creators, we can offer a hypothesis about what the research findings say about how to craft headlines.
As we started out saying, there has never been more content vying for reader attention — more channels, more content, more publishers all competing for our time and mind share. This means the modern internet user is forced to be more discerning about the headlines they click on, and is hyper-cognizant of where they are investing their time.
The commonality among the top three resonating headline types vs. the bottom two is that the more the headline type resonated, the more explicit the headline was as to what the reader was going to get out of reading the article.
Put another way, humans don't like uncertainty. A headline like "30 Ways to Make Drinking Tea More Delightful" removes any ambiguity about what the article is going to do for me. It tells me exactly what I will and will not get from it: It is going to give me a specific number of ways to make drinking tea more enjoyable. This may be a reason why BuzzFeed has found such success with readers using these headline types.
Likewise, the second most popular headline type, reader-addressing, is also very explicit and direct about what I will get out of the article (Ways You Need to Make Drinking Tea More Delightful).
Contrast that with the least popular headline type, the question (What are Ways to Make Drinking Tea More Delightful?), which, perhaps given the phrasing, leaves in place a certain amount of ambiguity for the reader.
Conclusion: three essential tips when crafting your headlines
While we are not saying it makes sense for every publisher to try and become the next BuzzFeed, and we don't think the data suggests a directive to publishers to write every headline in "number format," we do think it serves as a reminder to publishers of the following guidelines:
- Don't forget the headline!
Too many content creators invest a great deal of time and energy creating awesome content, but then tack a "meh" headline on as an afterthought. Remember — 80% of readers never make it past the headline, so spend the extra bit of time to create a great one that grabs the reader's attention.
- Be as explicit as possible about what your content will and will not do
There are a bazillion pieces of content clamoring for your audience's attention. Our data suggests that the clearer you can make your headline as to what the content will and will not do, the more that headline will resonate with your audience.
- Don't forget to craft "headlines" in search, too
The search results are no less of a "headline click decision" for your audience than other online channels. Make sure you are putting your best foot forward when enticing readers to click on your website in the search results by following rich snippet best practices, and by leveraging schema.org to include visual markup (shown to increase CTR in many cases). (This is a great resource for more information on implementing schema.org markup.)
At the end of the day — if nothing else — this research should remind us that headlines are at least as important as the content itself in capturing reader attention in both search and social. Content creators, be sure to give headlines proper attention before publishing content.
Did you guys do any testing on positive vs negative headlines? For example, The 10 Dumbest Cities in America (Negative) vs. The 10 Smartest Cities in America (Positive)?
I have seen higher ctr on negative, but a higher tendancy to share for positive.
Hey Chris,
Interesting idea--we did not. My hypothesis would be in line with what you have seen--that negative would do better than positive (maybe why the news is all negative, headlines on news sites tend to skew negative etc.). I guess as a species (most of us) are just wired to be interested in the negative :-)
Because people love reading negative critiques. Everyone has a troll "inside", but we don't want our friends and colleagues to know about it, so we share positive stuff more frequently. ;-)
Absolutely we have done lot of tests on the headlines, controversial view point or unique headlines or headlines with hidden and manipulative meaning catches users eyes, shorter headlines gets more clicks than the longer ones.
Interesting survey results. This would be harder to measure, but I would also be interested in long-term effects. Sometimes "exciting" headlines make me more likely to click on them, but if the headline is all hype and the article disappoints, I'm less likely to frequent that site in the future. (For example, The Weather Channel has a lot of good information, but all the sidebars seem to be devolving into "YOU WON'T BELIEVE" click-bait these days...)
Basically, make sure you use an interesting headline that will get people to read your awesome articles, but even more importantly, make sure your awesome articles live up to your interesting headlines!
Very good point. People will rapidly catch on that you are all 'headline' and no 'article'.
Very good point. I think Cracked.com (one of my favourite sites) overdoes it sometimes... They've released a ton of articles with the phrase "You Won't Believe" in them, but that said, they usually are unbelievable.
Content creators will have to be careful and make sure they're not using such a phrase for the sake of it - i.e. "You Won't Believe" with content that people already know about - otherwise the reader will be going away disappointed.
Weather.com has been driving me nuts with those! I've actually started using other sources.
A lot of this research confirms old-school marketing ideas and how to write great headlines that get readers to explore your content. Despite the fact that consumers are now in charge, a lot of old-school marketing basics still hold up. Ogilvy on Advertising is still a must-read.
Pick Up Artists are familiar with something called a False Time Constraint. As you sit down at a table with a few people you just met 30 seconds ago, you say, "I can only stay a minute, I have to get back to my friends."
If you sit down with people they naturally wonder what is going to happen. Are they going to be stuck with you?
Saying you have to take off in a minute takes that worry away.
It's just social skills.
A list post, "The Top 3 Ways..," is similar. It lets people know what to expect - only 3 things. Or for funny email postcards, you have 21 - a nice selection. I think that's why they like to click these headlines.
I like the analogy Greg.
yup, that's a great social analogy! People don't want to commit to anything without knowing upfront how much it will cost them time wise. I would be interested to see if there is any turn down because of the large quantity. Would "21 tricks" produce fewer clicks than "7 hacks". The reason is 7 sounds like a smaller time commitment to read through than 21. Any idea?
Nothing has changed. Old school direct marketeers know headlines/sentences with 'You' in it or with a specific number or percentage generate more response. Check your local newsstand, take a look at womens magazine covers and you'll see a lot of numbers in the headlines.
Very interesting stuff. It looks like the headline cases in the examples are not right though.
Should be:
Unless I'm confused which is often the case.
Understanding what captures your readers attention is very important. This is why analytics is so so important with anything you do on your website.
Thanks I always have trouble creating headlines :( definately going to look into this a little more.
Look to Gawker for some of the best headlines on the web. A personal favourite: In Sweden They Market Pet Insurance with Synchronized Skydiving Cats Set to R. Kelly
A point was made up above about looking at women's magazines on the newsstand. It's a great point. Standing in a newsagent or supermarket and looking at the magazines in your niche to see what sort of stuff they're covering and how they're 'selling' the mag with their coverlines is something I do regularly.
Even better, you can do it from the comfort of your desk chair by looking at Zinio or the Apple newsstand. It's probably best to look at Apple's UK newsstand as the American business model for print magazines is based more on subscriptions, so their covers don't have to work as hard to sell the content via lots of coverlines. In the UK there's more emphasis in sales from newsstand, so you'll find a lot more coverlines for inspiration.
Anyway, useful insight in the article, thanks Nathan!
I've been saving this post for some time. Just had the time to read through it. There are some really interesting finds in this survey. However, the most usable for me is how you have 5 kinds of headlines to work with and that capitalised first letters are preferred. +1 for a great post.
Great post, Nathan.
One thing I'd like to share is this: don't get carried away with a sensationalist headline. I've written two blog posts recently where I think I overdid it - with one of them in particular, the headline was: "Why You Should Never, Ever [Do Something]" but in the actual article itself I argue that you can do it, but just be careful how you go about it. So in hindsight, I probably should gone with "Why You Should Be Very Careful [Doing Something]," but then it might've gotten less clicks, less views and less of a reaction. There's definitely a balancing act to be had.
No question, it is a balancing act and it can be hard to know if we have strayed too far over to one side. I think there needs to be a willingness to experiment and see what works best.
Evernoted. Thanks for sharing these insights Nathan. As a feed reader and Twitter user myself not being able to instantly see image thumbnails and the social media virality scores (likes, tweets, etc.) of articles through those mediums, titles have a huge impact on whether I'd click on the link or not. I also think the way a title is worded affects its clickability - if it mostly uses terms I'm not familiar with, I usually wouldn't bother myself with it unless I'm seeing it shared by people I know.
It's great information! Now I know what types of articles write in my blog. I think these priciples related to every topic as it's about human psychics.
Awesome post. I would have thought that there would have been more gender differences in choosing one headline over another. Perhaps one reason women like numbered headlines so much is that many women's magazines have numbered headlines on the cover "20 ways to impress your man" or "10 ways to tell if he's cheating". Thank you Cosmo.
Hey Nathan,
Even thought this post is 2 years old, the content is still highly relevant and very interesting.
I've implemented your techniques into writing the following title:
"5 Must Do Steps To Secure Your Google Account."
Used both sentence case letter capitalizing and the number of steps included.
Thanks for your helpful post!
Although I found this article a bit too late, but this is what I was actually looking forward to. There is no doubt that title with facts and figures can increase your CTR by great deal, I usually ask my team to prepare at least 5 to 6 titles for a post and we test them through different social channels and accounts. A large proportion of readers prefer titles that are shorter and have some facts and figure involved, this tactic can greatly increase your exposure while competing with others.
The trick is to write searchable headlines that harness these insights. Also, it's really hard to leave a comment using an iPad.
ha!
One of the findings reported here obfuscates the data's true meaning, and is puzzling to readers who scan.
I'm supposing that's how the original study may have labeled them, but I point that out as it seems like even a commenter or three may have gotten it misconstrued.
Otherwise, exceptional article -- exactly what I was searching for. Thanks for the data.
That was an very Resourceful Writing.
Thanks.
This is a really interesting post given my love/ hate relationship with post titles. Naturally I'm keen to attract as many clicks to my content as possible, but sometimes I look at my feed reader and see all those formulaic How-tos and 10 secrets and 21 Questions and I think we're beginning to write like machines.
Sometimes I just want to read a headline that looks completely different. One that intrigues as much as it explains or is just plain mental and fuses my circuits in a totally new way.
Sometimes I have the balls to post one myself, but most times I march with the machines.
Andrew
Hi Nathan! I like your tips when crafting our headlines. I tend to agree that we should not forget to craft "headlines" in search too. Search results are no less of a "headline click decision" for our audiences than other online channels. We just need to make sure that we are putting our best foot forward when alluring readers to click on our website in the search results by following rich snippet best practices, and by leveraging schema.org to include visual markup.
The trick for many of us is to write a searchable headlines that harness these insights.
really useful! thanks alot
Great research. I was surprised to see the preference for sentence case for headlines. The last graphic, Headline Preference and Clarity, was very interesting as well. Never thought of adding numbers in the headline is more clear but it makes sense.
This is super awesome info. I know that I sometimes can get really "hug-a-tree-Hippy-happy" with my blog titles (see what I mean), and now I see why only my favorite Hippies are following my blog. Time to start the count down!
Nice points Nathan.
While I appreciate the numbers-rule-the-headlines game, I kinda find these articles not creative, most of them (note: this is a personal preference). Remember those 24 ways to blah blah articles and how they narrate things blandly - like those countless others? Nothing wrong with them, but the internet is littered with them.
If I could cite an example, headlines at DailyMail.co.uk scarcely use numbers; they just rely on creativity and wit. I think these two, too, are key to readers clicking our articles. Forbes.com, too, have great headlines.
Yes, they're entertainment and news sites, but we in the SEO world could learn a thing or two from them.
Superb post from Moz, as usual :-)
Great Info!! Good to see different headline preferences by different people. Headline has always been an important element and we can use our creativity to mix with huge data. Thanks for the ideas!! Definitely try to implement these ideas.
I have seen so often that my poor titles in the past have not had as great of results. I believe it has even slightly affected my comment results as well.
Yea, I have also observed in my writing that superb headline writing draws on a different 'muscle' than the actual content creation itself. I haven't traditionally been very good at it, but am working to get better.
I guess the 'Mama June' headline in one of the above examples demonstrates the power of using Trainwreck Syndrome for CTR!
Great Post Nathan Safran, however could you please tell me, does this survey work for IT related topics, such as web development, software solutions, etc... Because i have been writing content for IT company.. so should i implement these things in my Handlines?, which are on IT tipocs...
Since placing too many stars in a bowl makes the bowl invisible same is the case with using many superlatives in a headline or title. You will not believe something if it looks too good to believe. If the title alone is too good to believe who is gonna read the rest of the article.
Interesting analysis. This is great to take into consideration on my page.
Great stuff!
Gonna use and implement whenever I can. Thank you.
Great info! Even if these are tactics that the magazines have been using for years it is definitely great to remind online content creators of this. I will definitely keep this in mind the next time I'm creating content -- if the headline doesn't draw people in, everything else goes to waste.
I would like to see the survey that was used. It would be interesting to see how questions were phrased. Also, how many people were surveyed?
It'll be interesting to know the numbers on shorter and longer headlines by gender. Thanks for sharing.
If you mean superlatives--there were no significant differences between gender.
Hey Nathan
Thanks for sharing this, any chance for the link to the conductor study you referenced here ? I would love to dig a bit deeper in to it and test out a few thing for myself.
Hey George, the Conductor study is as described in the article above :)
Thanks for pointing that out.
Hi Nathan
Thanks for a great post.
Did you research cover the actual numbers used in headlines?
A good friend once told me that round numbers, like 20 or 50 don't work as well as irregular numbers, like 21 or 19.
Don't see myself how that +1 or -1 would make a difference but he was adament!
Thanks. We didn't look at actual numbers, however I have heard the same thing your friend cites--that irregular numbers do better.
I had a boss once who insisted on scheduling meetings for odd numbers:11:17 am, 2:23 pm, etc. He asserted that an unusual number captures attention better, and will be remembered better. I've always thought there might be some truth to it, but don't have any data to back it up.
I have no data to back up my point, but I believe irregular number show a much more specific and thought out detail in a headline.
The standard "10 Things You Should Know About Headlines" is very generic, whereas "14 Things Your Headline Needs To Contain" overlays a subconscious thought in the readers head that the author knows exactly what they're talking about, and they thought up exactly 14 key points.
Overall, I think it's because odd numbers make it seem like you've not cut your information short to hit an even number, or that you've waffled on to hit a higher even number.
Good point, irregular numbers imply "I know something about this topic"
Headlines is an essential for any blog or website because if you don't write headline then how can people click and read your post? but headline is not single part of your post, effective headlines is an important for you just like mentioned at above. I love these tactics and wondering that in future I will use it.
This is really useful! Of course is more complicated than this. I mean different audiences (beyond just gender category) read and engage in different ways. But anyway this is a good guide.
Helpful stuff here. It seems to me that one element that makes 'number' headlines effective is that they are specific and actionable. The headline betrays the outline of the content.
I'm surprised as many as a fifth of respondents prefer headlines in all caps! I would think that would only be appropriate in very specific situations, like weather advisories or official military communications (until recently). ;-)
I'd love to see some data from psychology or neuroscience as to why the headlines that were most preferred were the most preferred. Clear, number headline, sentence case, 1 superlative...what makes that blend so ideal?
Also, you said you surveyed 750 people in the US. What sort of demographic mix?
Sam,
For sure--a real follow up study grounded in psychology as to why the headlines that resonated did would be awesome (and, I'd bet would reveal even more insight about how to write headlines.). That was sort of what I was getting at with this line in the article:
Although a follow-up study that thoroughly examines why certain headline types resonate over others would add greater insight for marketers and content creators, we can offer a hypothesis about what the research findings say about how to craft headlines.
The demographic mix was fairly broad, although somewhat underrepresented from older demographics as usually happens with online surveys.
Great post Nathan. Numbers definitely grab attention in headlines. Browse the magazine stand at any store and you will see heavy reliance on number headlines. One thing I have noticed is when someone over relies on numbers in their headlines, their blog archive list starts to look more like a bingo card rather than something I want to read through. The trick seems to balance it out for a more natural flow - not every post needs a "7 tips for ..." headline.
No doubt, I wouldn't rely solely on number headlines, a mix is definitely needed.
Hi Nathan,
Really Great Post it's seems to attractive value you have describe in article . as well matter of headline always convincing to readers using headline types. as per definition of headline which can cover entire story as well article concept beginning to conclusion in one sentence.
Excellent article backed by some solid data. As others have mentioned, throughout the history of marketing, the headline has always been an essential element. I think we are privileged to live in a time that allows us to combine creativity with such a widespread amount of data. Definitely going to try implement these ideas for some of my companies clients.
Good one. I still wonder is it okay to use sentence case in framing a headline.
I'm not sure if I would do it in any other way other than being tongue in cheek--i.e pretending to shout/be exasperated about an issue--otherwise the risk is that readers think they are being yelled at :)
I am very like five this content types :D
high-level headline types:
THANKS YOU SO MUCH !!!
Anymore stats on the survey? I know a few people have asked already :P
We surveyed 750 online US users.