Posted on 05/26/2008 2:39:18 PM PDT by Aristotelian
Web users are getting more ruthless and selfish when they go online, reveals research.
The annual report into web habits by usability guru Jakob Nielsen shows people are becoming much less patient when they go online.
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.
Search rules
Instead, many are "hot potato" driven and just want to get a specific task completed.
(snip)
This makes them very resistant to highlighted promotions or other editorial choices that try to distract them.
"Web users have always been ruthless and now are even more so," said Dr Nielsen.
"People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience," he said.
(snip)
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.
Such extras are only serving to make pages take longer to load, said Dr Nielsen.
There has also been a big change in the way that people get to the places where they can complete pressing tasks, he said.
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.
"Basically search engines rule the web," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
I don’t see what’s selfish about not paying a lot of attention to ads and promotions, although it may distress the website owners. In fact, I have used AdMuncher for years, and never even see any ads.
Every time I visit Amazon this past month or so, I get a Kindle promotion stuck in my face. I quickly bypass it, but it’s beginning to make me dislike their site. It’s not exactl an ad, but I must say I’m thinking of asking the developers at AdMuncher if they can block the damned thing.
< BLINK >
Exactly!
< /BLINK >
And may Flash go the way of THAT fossil annoyance. Now people have perverted Flash to serve popunders.
The title of the article screams “I’m written by a Liberal”
Efficency in web surfing equals selfishness.....
So the author says we’re all selfish if we want to control our own time, and use it the way we wish, and not be controlled by others?
The author should avoid walking in the rain (frequent in England), as he will be a drowning victim, since his nose is so far in the air
Half of us are men. Seek and destroy is a way of life. It works in hunting, shopping and now web behavior.
I uninstalled flash. Pages now come up faster, with fewer glitches.
Agreed. The word “selfish” in the thread title makes no sense.
Complain about the customer. Are the “New” media execs all that different from the “old” media execs.
From a commercial:
We gotta get some new costomers. Cause the ones we got? They’re just awful. They’re always complaining.
When I need flash (rarely), I upload. Then uninstall again. It’s that simple.
The typical computer user would find it annoying if they had to re-install Flash Player every time they wanted to watch a YouTube video.
I haven’t noticed any problems with Flash on Mac OS X. Steve Jobs recently voiced some complaints about Flash being too inefficient for iPhone usage, but that issue may be resolved in about two weeks when the 3G iPhone is expected to be announced.
Unfortunately many site/domain/commerce owners still fall prey to the promises and BS of third-party consultants & developers and believe in the fool’s gold of Flash, forced-resized windows and the like.
No. More like smart.
Or, are you one of those people who can't believe how lucky you are that you are the One-Millionth Vistor! to every website you click on?
Yup, you got that right! And I ignore all of it. I don’t go online looking for ways to spend more money than I had planned to. (Although I do have an Amazon wishlist! lol)
Obviously, these brits never visited FR.
How is that "selfish"?
Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave.
What else are they supposed to do? Hang around and stare at a page with no goal or purpose in mind? Is it somehow inherently humanitarian to stare at some random schnooks web page?
Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention.
Of course. Given that most "promotion" is only a little divorced from fraud and that there is plenty of real, honest to goodness fraud on the web, why shouldn't people be suspicious?
The points made about browsing habits seem to be valid (i.e. most people DO browse quickly; this is one of the first things you learn when putting together a website), but the conclusion ("people are more selfish on the web!") seems to be a more incendiary way of saying: "people who browse the web don't act the way advertising conglomerates would like".
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