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Brick No135: Your No1 online competitor
By Matt Weston, Thursday 10 March 2005 Your No1 online competitor Believe it or not, the second most common thing people click on the web is the phrase "skip intro". In other words, fast-forward. If you insist on blocking the way-in to your website with a trophy wife Flash Animation, chances are your visitors will sidestep her advances. But nobody wants to know about the runner-up, the SECOND most common thing. Especially when Steve Krug reckons the MOST common thing accounts for between 30-40% of all web clicks. (And he's watched and measured a whole lot of people making a whole lot of clicks.) In first-place, by no short length, is the back button. In other words, rewind. Speaking of which, if you haven't got a website, and will never ever want one, you might not see much relevance in today's Brick. Perhaps you're even thinking of rewinding to what you were doing a minute ago. So to keep everyone smiling, I've posted some reader feedback on Brick No133, "Fixing The Film Shop" . . . some bricks & mortar ideas that should be interesting and instructive to all small business owners alike. Digital viewers should press the red button now. Or follow this link. For the rest of us, back to the back button . . . Why we use the Back Button to navigate Four reasons why the 30-40% stat makes sense: (1) If a page loads too slowly, the user clicks back. (2) It's quicker to run forwards than backwards. But, on the web, the opposite is true. If you click back, pages load quicker because they're already cached. (3) Whether you use IE 5/6, Firefox, Safari, Opera or Navigator, the back button is built into the top-left hand corner of your browser. And we all know the first place the eyes go on screen. (4) Jacob Nielson calls the back button "a standard command that is always the same". Many links offer an unexpected result. But the back button takes you back to safe territory, to what you know. And one reason why the stat might go higher: (5) More and more, we're relaying forward and back, forward and back, from search engine results. It takes Google 0.25 seconds to ping back 156 million results. As Steve Krug puts it: "There's not much of a penalty for guessing wrong [. . .] usually only a click or two of the back button." So we use the back button more because we're impatient, and because it's quick, top-left, reliable and easy. Each time someone visits your website, you're competing with the back button for her attention. (And the search results or previous page the back button returns her to.) And here's the scoop: the average website is getting more visits, but less attention with each visit. If you play around with Alexa you'll see that many sites now average less than two clicks a visit. More and more, you're telling me that the problem isn't getting traffic to your website, but converting that traffic to sign-ups or sales. How to compete A couple of ideas: (1) Give An Easy Click. The easy click on www.businessbricks.co.uk is the top Brick. The click gives an expected result: More. Hot Or Not works because people know what to do right away: Vote. Unless you sell a blindingly easy click that engages your visitor immediately, chances are they will click the back button. (2) Do Less. Most sites try to do too much. And they try to appeal to everyone, rather than just the Type A customers. Read this from Seth G and decide what it is that you really, really want your visitor to do. And use landing pages to make sure your visitor only sees relevant messages. Bric-A-Brac More chances to press red. (1) Further reading. Mark Hurst has a lot of useful stuff to say on today's subject. MH also runs www.thisisbroken.com a project that shows up broken customer experiences. Worth a look. (2) Further further reading. This time courtesy of Little Britain extra, Vincent Flanders, "The Biggest Web Design Mistakes of 2004, Part 2" (3) New reader meet-ups in Oxford, Guildford, Cardiff and Brighton. And, to prove we still have a Northern Soul, happenings next week in Glasgow (Monday 14 March) and Liverpool (Tuesday 15 March). (4) 17 Feb. Roy Keane accuses Arsenal players of diving, joking that the trend for colour-coded wristbands be extended to one for anti-diving. Within days, opportunist Tom Lippiett has red "No To Diving" bands up on eBay at a fiver a pop (50% to Oxfam). He gets coverage in the Man U fanzines, in the red tops and in the Daily Telegraph, and sells over a thousand. Oh, and Tom happens to warm the bench for my Sunday league team. (5) Once again, the link to some "Fixing The Film Shop" feedback. Big thanks go to Gavin, Arbind, Sarah Clarkson, Sarah Clarke, Rupert (x2), Tim (for the joke), and to everyone else who filled the suggestion inbox. Remember to sign up: back to top |
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