Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 19:10:51 -0500
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> << What I am trying to determine is whether any has done
> scientific work on the subject of scrolling. I did learn that one major
> online content provider found that only 10 per cent of its users
> scrolled from the first screen. So the provider resigned its pages to
> include NO scrolls. I am looking for this kind of evidence if it
> exists. >>
What's your baseline? In many cases we seem to react to online stats
as if they were something new and different when in fact they only
confirm what we always should have known. We know so little about
traditional readership, either because we don't have good stats or
don't understand the ones we have, that we assume completely
different schema are at work online when, in fact, online readership
may be no different than print readership.
When we talk of online scrolling, for example, we're not talking
about the percentage of those who start a story divided by those who
finish it all the way through the jump. We're talking about the
percentage who, when handed a page containing a story (and others),
choose to follow this one particular story all the way to its
conclusion.
In print, 10% would be a huge number for this. The typical person
may read no more than 1% of the stories offered him. Those who
follow stories through to their jumps are an even smaller number.
It's not the structure or design that's a problem in either case. Its
the interest level, time available, relative value and ease of use of
each individual story.
Only if we foolishly believe that non-journalists read the paper as
methodically as journalists might do we fret when we hear that a typical
reader selects only 1 of 100 stories offered him. We've spent decades
blissfully ignoring that the same sort of rejection rate that occurs
every time we hand a reader a fat daily newspaper.
From owner-online-news@marketplace.com Tue Sep 17 22:43:10 1996
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