Today Web visitors use search engines as 'answer engines.' They have learned much about the World Wide Web and they now view it as a single, integrated resource (for a great discussion of this pick up a copy of "Prioritizing Web Usability" by Nielsen and Loranger). The result of this shift means they don't think or care very much about individual websites. Their information grazing habits have turned them into answer engine query animals turning stones to find digestible nuggets of information. Here are the four things they do when they visit your site:
1) They go to their preferred search engine and type a few descriptive words.
2) The look at the top listings of the search engine results page.
3) They visit some of the sites they find on that page, but leave quickly after a minute or two... at best.
4) They view most pages for less than half a minute.
With such pressure to communicate effectively, you'll want to avoid fluffy talk, vague language, misleading statements, or poor graphics and photography. You'll want to give them well written and concise information, and avoid the temptation to engage in a concentrated sales pitch. You'll want to make sure your site is lean, well designed, easy to navigate, and standards compliant.
This takes a fusion of marketing, research, strategy, creative thinking and some experience with usability studies on how people succeed in their tasks using the web, and how they fail.
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