Here's an overview of their research:
- Take a homepage from a website. Not one tremendously well known in the public consciousness (CNN, NYTimes, Yahoo, etc) and yet one that does serve some market. Call this homepage "A"
- Remove all the content and leave only the look and feel. No more text, images, or labels, only colors, backgrounds and nameless action items. Let's call this neutered page "A'".
- Have people unfamiliar with A navigate it. Don't give them any particular clues or cues as to what to do, just have them sit in front of the page on a computer screen, mouse in hand, keyboard handy, and observe.
- Take a second group of people, same demographic diversity as the first group, and place them in front of A'. Same rules as before; no clues or cues, just have them sit there and observe what they do.
The second group, the group facing page A', the page without any content or navigational cues, traversed the page and clicked on items (remember, the A' page had no items marked as action items, just colors, shapes, etc) in roughly the same pattern and timing as people sitting at the A page (which had content, navigational cues, etc).
I admit I'm not sure how to interpret this information. I'm not sure if my inability to interpret it disturbs me or any of the possible explanations disturb me. Have we become programmed to respond to web based information in very specific ways, regardless of the information presented? Then good-bye designers. Is it true, then, that specific screen areas are hotspots regardless of what is in those areas? Then good-bye, media buyers.
Food for thought, this.
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
I'll be speaking at the San Francisco April '07 Emetrics Summit on Quantifying and Optimizing the Human Side of Online Marketing on May 7, 2007. Come on by and say hello.
Comment Preview