Usability guru, Jakob Nielsen shares an interesting finding that goes against the wishes of content portals:
Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave. Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention..many are "hot potato" driven and just want to get a specific task completed. [source]
He cites couple of reasons for this –
- The designs have become better but also users have become accustomed to that interactive environment
- Web users were also getting very frustrated with all the extras, such as widgets and applications, being added to sites to make them more friendly.
Interesting stats
In 2004, about 40% of people visited a homepage and then
drilled down to where they wanted to go and 60% use a deep link that took them directly to a page or destination inside a site. In 2008, said Dr Nielsen, only 25% of people travel via a homepage. The rest search and get straight there.
What does this mean?
Search engines rule the world. Content portals, no matter how hard they try will have a difficulty in retaining the users (and monetizing).
Success metrics need to be revisited – it should not be pageviews anymore (and am not talking about AJAX and PV issue). UUs and Returning frequency is what really matters. At the same time, content portals should rethink their push-approach (for e.g. rss feeds) and make that as part of the content strategy.
Jakob makes another interesting point - widgets are not adding value to sites, they actually are affecting the load time badly.
Do you agree with this? I think most of the widget story is over and except the ones which serve ads, others aren’t very helpful.
What’s your opinion?
“widgets are not adding value to sites, they actually are affecting the load time badly. ”
This is DAM true.
Widgets consumes lot of bandwidth for Content Updation. This updation worries a lot for broadband users who have limited bandwidth subscription. If you open Inc.com it will consume 10 to 15MB daily [packet transfer] [i tested it in packet capture].
So if u have more widgets in web page more bandwidht consumption which is unbecessary and increase in load time.
Even RSS readers takes more bandwidth if you go on adding feeds to it.
Thats why in near future Layer 12 companies are in busy designing hi-capacity Ethernet cards and better OFC and
Yet another sweeping generalization or Flaimbait from Mr.Nicholson .last time he opened his mouth was when he said that web 2.0 don’t care for usability [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6653119.stm] .
in this case he got a Right DATA but wrong conclusion . he forget to take context of usage in account .this is a known fact that most of the people go to a site when they are looking for something . surfing is still intent centric . for such studies search engine data is deceptive in many sense .you can prove anything . search is a mix of intent and limited rationality of users . for example
look at the google trend’s india data for keywords JAVA,orkut,movies,yahoo [http://tinyurl.com/472gmh] right now orkut and yahoo are on top . does that mean people who enter orkut in search box don’t know that orkut is a destination site ? i mean where else they could have heard of it ? What is the number #1 searched keyword on Yahoo? well its Google . go figure
another example , see Google trend for Indian searching for
[ Java,love ,camera deal ,friend,pasta recipe ]
key words mix of intent and subtle things . [ http://tinyurl.com/53sems for india JAVA on Top , Friends on bottom and no one is looking for pasta recipe .
same data for Italy ? Pasta on top ,love second and friend still on bottom[http://tinyurl.com/4eux6e]
for US ? LOVE on top rank, java second and no growth in friends for years ,camera deals are flat on bottom . [http://tinyurl.com/3q6af8] does that mean no one is buying camera online in US or does that means nobody makes Friends online in US . they do they just go to the destination sites directly
this guy is seriously smoking something terrible .
those were some interesting stats.
thanks for sharing them.
How a user reaches and uses a website depends on intent of the user. I generally open the home page to browse the content if i am at my leisure. If i am writing code and if i need to refer to some API then i search for it in Google and go to that page directly.
So it all depends on the intentions of the user and that doesn’t mean search engines rule the world if people are using them to go directly to the content.
Having a search engine without the content portals is of no use. When it comes to widgets, they do affect the load time badly.
Prashant – Look at it from ads perspective as well:
What’s more profitable ? search ads or banner ads?
We know the ans.
Also the debate here is about how much of PVs you actually generate (vs. the porta’s intention to keep you in their own network).
Also – how much of sites you land up (say in a day) as a search query vs. a direct URL?
For me, I’d say it’s 75% for search query, and 25% for direct URLs. Within the 25%, 75% is thru’ feed readers.
what about you guys?
well last time i checked Google Analytics for My blog i had following result
#1 source of traffic was My Email Signature. next prominent source was user from other sites like TC,Contentsutra,Pluggd.in ,AllthingsD, Next was from Search engine. and search engine traffic was pointed to few selected post only . average time spent was max for direct hits .
I would say I land up on sites by URL 60% of the times and through search 40% of the times.
Search engines rule the world! True, I think.
Content needs are vast. I want something on UX, UU etc and I can NOT rely on one site alone for this kind of stuff. Because it can NEVER be complete in itself – near ideal case can be UGC … prob – quality is compromised. So thats where search engines have an advantage.
Take the example of Pluggd.in.
Ashish has been posting great stuff here. Still my frequency of coming back here will drop to 20% of the present rate if he stops sending feeds to my mails or if i don receiv comment updates on selected posts. That was a way Ashish sorted out to retain his readers. And I think its great and executed nicely.
Lot many other content sites have been hosting great content but pay somewhat biased attention on user retention – usually they start doing things like
- necessary login
-unnecessary feature packed pages. I can not find the quality content you have with you because you have so many other (not needed) features on the screen of my 17″ monitor. I feel quality of your content has degraded. With every extra second I spend on finding the right stuff and every extra page i’m navigated to. When I’m lost, I go back to google.com and search. I ll find the appropriate stuff on the same site( ful URL- if they appear on higher page ranks!) or avoid visiting that particular URL if they frustrated me too much.
Widgets and all … should be used with a little intelligence.
First they add to the load time.
Second its of no use to push content unless your user don’t even understand what exactly your site is offering.
Bottom line for me is to use them with care. Have a well designed home page (Neat and Clean – with updates)
K.I.S. man!
This recipe looks interesting. Does not seem like lot of work, and the end product that is Biryani looks tempting. For me Biryani is one of the best Indian food.