How do users really use the Web?

The most important thing is the difference between how we think people use Web sites and how they actually use them.

 

When we are creating sites, we act as though people are going to pore over each page, reading our finely crafted text, figuring out how we have organized things, and weighing their options before decidiing which link to click.

 

What users actually do most of the time is just glance at each new page, scan some of the text, and click on the first link that catches their interest or vaguely resembles the thing they are looking for. There are usually large parts of the page that they don't even look at.

 

One of the very feww well-documented facts about Web use is that people tend to

spend very little time reading most Web pages. Instead, users scan (or skim) them,

looking for words or phrases that catch our eye. When we examine users' gaze

patterns on Web pages with a eyetracking system, we confirm these facts that people stay just about more or lesss than 15 seconds on one page - even on news pages. They skip Web sites very quickly.

 

The exception, of course, is pages that contains documents like reports, or product

descriptions. But even then, if the document is longer than a few paragraphs, we're likely to print it out because it's easier and faster to read on paper than on a screen.

 

Why do users scan?

 

- Users usually in a hurry. Much of our Web use is motivated by the desire to

  save time. As a result, Web users tend to act like sharks: They have to keep

  moving, or they'll die. We just have the time to read any more than necessary.

 

- We know we don't need to read everything. On most pages, we're really only

  interested in a fraction of what's on the page. We're just looking for the bits that

  match our interests or the task at hand, and the rest of it is irrelevant.

  Scanning is how we find the relevant bits.

 

- We're good at it. We've scanning newspapers, magazines, and books all our

  lives to find the parts we are interested in, and we know that it works.

 

 

Never think that users read all parts that we provide on our Web sites. They just scan our Web sites very quickly. If users decide which link they click, they will just click it without their thoughts right now. Before we design and provide our Web sites to people, we must think very carefully about  what users need and how they act or behavior. People don't like thinking about your Web sites.