I’ve frequently drawn attention to the fact that there is NO point in trying to control users online because it is the user who ‘owns’ the experience and decides them self what they wish to see and use. This has recently been underpinned by research from Jakob Nielsen, usability guru and useit.com. Quite simply, web users are getting “more ruthless and selfish when they go online.”

Evidence from studies carried out by Nielsen now confirm that “users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave.” Why should this be, when there are lovely glittery web sites to grab your attention?

There are a number of reasons but the principle one is that users know they are in charge. They have grasped the fact that they have full control over where they go, what they see and for how long.

Usually a user will go online for a specific search or intention. With this singular destination mind, they go hunting, almost always starting the hunt with a search query. Sponsored Links are ignored in preference to ‘true’ search results returned. Users click into these results, give the returned page a cursory review and go after anything in that site that looks promising. Sites that fail to deliver the content required or are overly heavy on download time or inaccessible through unwieldy navigation are ruthlessly refused with a ‘back click’. Users give destination sites 2 to 3 seconds to please before the dreaded back button is clicked.

Occasionally users will surf ‘casually’ but even then they are formidable with their attitude towards sites that please or dissatisfy them.

This flies in the face of guarantees of certain folk who claim that online advertising, particularly aggressive advertising that ‘controls’ the web page or uses gimmicks to make users linger, is effective in keeping users on the page and even endearing them. In best cases, most users are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention and, in the worst cases, users are plain fed up with site and the company in question.

So why am I praising this study and the ’selfish user’? Because it underlines what I have been harking on about for over a decade now. That sites need to be designed for the user and that ‘content is king’. Clients need to understand it is not enough to have a site designed and leave it like that. You need to get us designers to work harder to make more accessible sites, but so too you, as the site owner, need to think harder about what your users want from the site and how they will want to access the information, both for now and a frequent steps in the future.

If more people did this, we’ll have a better, more valuable web and the 90% of web sites that (still) suck will vanish into the ether.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 10:31 am and is filed under Blogroll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.