Web users 'getting more ruthless'

205711 Resource 76407 24 21 1212422415434 1219596355545 Controlled Googley Design: Learning How To Help "Ruthless" Internet Users

Google employees have plenty of time to think about doing business online, and we can learn a great deal by observing and listening to this giant.

While Google is big, their notions and philosophies about doing business online are relatively simple and straightforward. Recently, the Google User Experience Team (UX) convened to publish the principles that ought to guide Google design teams worldwide. There are only <a href="http://www.google.com/corporate/ux.html">ten guidelines</a>, and they are indeed simple.A reputable design consultant told me in 1995 – “Never underestimate the power of whitespace.”. The Google homepage obviously embraces this philosophy, although iGoogle represents a slight shift away from the simplicity of this irresistible search solution.However, there are some that believe the Google user experience is a bit outdated, perhaps needing an AJAX face-lift. This is especially the sentiment for applications such as GMail. I think there’s a big difference between a search engine and a business application – GMail and other Google Apps need to address usability issues that are fundamentally different from user expectations involving search.Principle #1 - Focus on people – their lives, their work, their dreams.With this principle in mind, consider how you use search in your daily work. Are you a “ruthless” searcher? Do you use Google and other search tools to find and focus on exactly what you want?Typically, you start with Google (worldwide) and you find a domain (preferably a specific page) that provides the exact content you were looking for. Bypassing a home page and going directly to the page that meets your information quest is far more desirable than starting at a home page and browsing for answers. You aren’t alone – in 2008, about 75% of Internet users behave this way because they have learned how to find and access deep-links that provide answers. Part of the reason this percentage is so high is the advent of perma-links – these are page links that represent a specific idea or answer, or topic. Largely, blogs are responsible for creating <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permalink">perma-links</a> but many content management systems are now using this approach to create more findable and sustainable content.<a href="http://www.thepomoblog.com/papers/the_cost_of_interaction.htm">Terry Heaton</a> recently wrote about this in concert with new statistics from <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7417496.stm">Jacob Neilsen</a>. The data is clear and supports my past hunches about searchers that <a title="MyTH: Organic Search Rankings Lower Than Page 3 Achieve Little." href="item/168002">hop over short tail terms</a> to access the long-tail of content. These newly recognized trends also support a hunch I had about the new definition of a home page - every page is the "home page". ;-) 9 application/xml false Googley Design Jacob Nielsen long tail SEO short tail Web users 'getting more ruthless' The annual report into web habits by usability guru Jakob Nielsen shows people are becoming much less patient when they go online. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7417496.stm MyTH: Organic Search Rankings Lower Than Page 3 Achieve Little. | MyST Blogsite® Consumers are adapting to the changing Internet topology by using search queries that are more discrete and browsing well beyond the first three search page results to find what they're looking for. item/168002 The Cost of Interaction COST OF INTERACTION: A form of web currency ? the price users are required to pay to view, use, consume or interact with web content. http://www.thepomoblog.com/papers/the_cost_of_interaction.htm Consumers are now better conditioned and know how to use search engines and with greater efficiency. Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 68.40.167.222 false true false false true 174050 false false true false false false true 76407 blog blogsite/Blogsite/web