Friday, September 18, 2015

New spoons please

When was the last time you went online looking to buy something - say your summer vacation - but you were so taken by an online advert that you ended up buying a set of grapefruit spoons instead (I'd wager never, even if you swap the spoons for "anything").

The reason is that we simply ignore anything that gets in our way online, as if it simply didn't exist. 

It doesn't matter how clever the messaging or how "native" the experience, if something is served up in front of you that does not correspond to the task in hand, it is of no value to you or the people who placed it there.

The data for this is abundant and yet the implications of it are lost on many of us who supposedly do this for a living. 

Sites are packed with things like hero images and rotating banners which look nice and contains all the content companies want people to see, to complete indifference.

Why?

Because most people already know what they are looking for and the chances that this is mentioned in a hero image are minimal at best. Anything that doesn't look like content is immediately ignored. Anything that isn't relevant, comes next.

The majority of sites are still steered by the interests of the organisation and ignore the needs of the individual user. This is often why they use social media to act as customer service rather than engagement.

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