atom-rss.com
news
atom - rss .com
info
Web users 'getting more selfish'
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.
Success rates measuring whether people achieve what they set out to
do online are now about 75%, said Dr Nielsen. In 1999 this figure
stood at 60%.
There were two reasons for this, he said.
"The designs have become better but also users have become
accustomed to that interactive environment," Dr Nielsen told BBC
News.
Now, when people go online they know what they want and how to do
it, he said.
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.
"I do not think sites appreciate that yet," he added. "They still
feel that their site is interesting and special and people will be
happy about what they are throwing at them."
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.
But, he added, this did not mean that the search engines were doing
a perfect job.
"When you watch people search we often find that people fail and do
not get the results they were looking for," he said.
"In the long run anyone who wants to beat Google just has to make a
better search," said Dr Nielsen.
W3C standards
Our Web sites conform to W3C standards, that are accessible not only to people with disabilities by adhering to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), but also to other form factors, including printers, handheld devices such as cell phones and PDAs, and across different browsers and browser versions.
