I always believed this time would come: the web experience polarized into two distinct camps: (1) the grazers and (2) the ruthless researcher. A recent article by usability guru Jakob Nielsen seems to share my opinion too.
According to Mr Nielsen, web users are “getting more ruthless and selfish when they go online.” Nielsen’s annual web habits report shows people are becoming much less patient when they go online.
Report Findings
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.
According to Mr Nielsen (and once more, I agree) search dominates the web landscape. Surfers are “task oriented” and arrive at websites with a SWAT-like efficiency and simply want to “get in, get the job done, and get out.”
This task oriented mindset is making it very tough to distract browsers with other promotions. These ruthless researchers have little patience for such things. According to Nielsen, sites “Don’t appreciate this [fact] yet. They still feel their site is interesting and special and people will be happy about what they are throwing at them.” Wrong!
Research shows web users are also getting “very frustrated” with all the extras such as widgets and applications, which were added to makes sites ‘friendlier’ when in fact all they have succeeded in doing is slowing the load time and annoying the user!
Finally one other large change is website navigation, in 2004 40% of the visitors would “drill down” and dig for information, navigating into the site from the front pages. Today only 25% will do this - the other 75% use a major search and go straight to the page.
In conclusion, search engines rule the web because of this (or in spite of this???) and if your individual pages are not being found and indexed then you are quite literally lost in the digital woods and your customers will not find you.
*SEO/IM TIP*
Get a list of your website pages and see if they are included within your favourite search engine. Typically the way to do this involves entering “site:http//yourdomain.com” into the browser field to see what is returned. This “indexed pages list” will include all the pages that yoru chosen search engine is aware of. If you have 100 pages on your website and this command returns only 10 distinct results… You have a problem. The good news is I can help and I’d be happy to do so. Simply
contact me for a free initial consultation, and remember to
download my new SEO eBook too, there’s lots of neat DIY advice contained within the 96 pages. (
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