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 have had Flash spike the CPU countless times, and (thankfully rarely) even crash the browser. Now they may have improved it, but when bitten, I’m shy. And seeing Flash used so mindlessly nowadays, it’s not like I’m in any hurry to forgive that bane of the computer world.
For shining examples of trash Flash, (and other idiocies), look this site over:
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/dailysucker/
Wow, I have not visited that site since the blink tags!
I think I do not like Adobe in general any more. I would love to see the stats on what percentage click 'Skip Intro'.
*.PDF is right there with Flash as an annoyance. My law firm started sending documents that had to be reworked in that format. Well, you cannot WORK with those files, unless you buy the super-duper full featured version. Cute marketing. I went ballistic, the matter was fixed.
Photoshop is nice. Costly, but if someone wants to pretend they are a "Pro" they have to have it. For the rest of us there is Paint Shop.
I don’t care much for .pdf’s either. More bloat.
Never used Photoshop. What little I know to do is done with freebies.
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