Re: Web pages

[Wolf Lahti <wduby -at- TECHCENTER -dot- PACCAR -dot- COM>]

Sally Yeo said:

>I am presenting a session at the STC convention on Web pages that people
>return to. I am conducting an informal poll and would appreciate your
responses.

>What makes you return to pages a number of times?



Lots of polling and reporting agencies try to quantify this, but I don't
believe that it's a phenomenon that lends itself to analysis, other than
saying something like sex is a major attractant. (It has been reported that
over 70% of all searches using web crawlers have the word 'sex' in them.)

What brings me back to a web page is my interest in the subject and the
usefulness of the information therein presented. My interrests are fairly
eclectic, ranging from woodworking to folk music to Finland to horses to
investing to furry fandom (if you don't know, don't ask) to computer
graphics to... Well, you get the idea.

Secondary considerations include how well the information is presented
(fairly high in importance), the promise of frequently updated material, and
the access rate. (If it takes forever to load due to unnecessasry graphics,
you're going to lose half your audience right away.) Lots of little pages to
jump around at a web site, each with only a button to jump to another page,
are irritating--but almost as irritating is an enormous page you have to
scroll through forever before you're done. Obviously one has to strike a
balance; I like to set a limit of three 'page downs' for the pages I design.

I admit a strong bias toward a good sense of language. If a web site is
peppered with poor grammar and misspellings, I'm far less likely to return,
regardless of the personal value of its information to me; I find it hard to
trust information presented by someone who cares so little about the basics.

If this is any help at all, let me know. I could use a gold star.



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      "I hate quotations."
           -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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