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June 01, 2004
Top Web Behavior #8: Set some preferences
The BehaviorIt seems like more and more websites are giving you the opportunity to customize things. Have a favorite football team? Then they should be on the front page! Like to follow certain stocks? Then why read news about others? Don't like navigation bars down the side of the page? Then move them to the top. Although this customizability can be expensive to provide, it's growing like wildfire. What they gain (and you lose)
Site operators want you to customize your experience for two main reasons. First, they believe that you'll come back more often -- after all, the site is just the way you like it, and you've already done the hard work. But there's another, more subtle reason why site operators seem so flexible: it's free usability testing. For example, if a website is considering a major new feature they might conduct focus groups and field trials with a marketing research firm to see how the changes are received. This works well, but it costs money. Instead, many companies simply roll out the new feature, and give you the opportunity to turn it off. If most people leave it on, then the change is a success, but if too many shut it off the company knows to reevaluate. And all without spending a dime on research. Gallery
There's no gallery for this entry simply because the behavior is so pervasive. On nearly every page of nearly every top site, there are opportunities to hide and show features, change languages and toggle settings.
Posted by at June 1, 2004 05:30 PM
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