Open Learning Network

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The past couple of months I have been researching user behaviour on websites and more specifically what makes people visit and revisit a site. I have been looking at sites about music, cooking, knitting, pets, legal issues, arts, software development, education, games, kids, infants, parenthood, books, journalism, heritage, history, medicine, gardening, finance…you name it, I have probably looked at it. During this initial research, I was looking to spot patterns in user behaviour through analytics provided by Alexa and Google, including site linking, driving traffic to the site data, site reach, bounce percentage, the time user time spent on the site etc. There is a minority of sites that have no ranking or retain their analytics from public view, so I haven’t been able to assess these sites.

So why do people visit a site? The answer is simple. It is the content that drives people to websites. Content is what every user is searching for in some sort of format. One of the greatest achievements of the internet was enabling us to acquire information in new ways and in speeds never before imaginable. UC Berkeley’s Peter Lyman and Hal R. Varian provide an excellent overview and evidence base in ‘How much information’. The internet has enabled us to scan through content, look at other people’s comments on this content, read comments or comment on user-generated images, videos, documents, maps, create, share and co-create content with peers, friends.

Nonetheless, the parameters that determine great content have become more particular. In order to not only attract users to a website for this first visit but to build up a loyal following of users and turn interest in a site into actions within it, there are 6 main parameters, these are:

1. Uniqueness of Content

Probably one of the most difficult aspects especially since it requires rising above the crowd and spotting content potential all the time. However it also shows an ability and willingness to constantly learn and enquire what is of value to your online audience. From the research, I have detected 3 ways of generating unique content; generated by the owner of the site; generated by external actors; and generated by the users themselves.

2. High Quality of Content

All major search engines favour pages with high-quality content. What is the point in having a website and bring people to a website if you are not going to give them something that interests them. Professional, well-written content in the form of text, images or videos gets users interested in a website and conveys credibility.

3. Constantly Updated or ‘Fresh’ Content

Constantly updated content seems to provide more contemporary information to the user, which increases its value. Google’s algorithm uses a process that prioritizes content depending on how frequently it is updated.

4. Speed of the Information Flow

UC Berkeley economists Hal Varian and Peter Lyman estimated that the total new information people generated in one year reached 1.5 Exabyte, yielding a 66% rate of growth in information per year, which has been steadily increasing for at least a century. The McKinsey & Co report talks about ‘providing faster access to content’.

5. Micro-content

Jakob Nielsen, usability guru calls micro-content the ‘Pearls of clarity’. Twitter is probably the best example of the importance of micro-content. Micro-content enables users to immediately know if the content is of interest to them and if it is relevant.

6. Relevance of content

The creation and provision of relevant content turns interests into actions. Relevant content that supplies users with answers that meet their needs gives the user a value-added experience on the site that in turn makes them perform actions on the site. In order to create relevant information it is very important to know who we are creating it for and what they perceive as valuable content. Easier said than done.