Promotion is the New Navigation
Posted 06-17-2008 at 10:27 AM by WebBilling.com
A little more on how users discover and access your site and how best for you to capitalize on it...
Although 57 percent of online users navigate their favorite sites from the home page, leading sites report two-thirds of the traffic they experience arrives deep within the site from search engines. This is according to research findings from http://www.jupiterresearch.com.
Although conventional wisdom has directed content programmers to focus attention on using home pages to influence how audiences navigate through websites, the success of keyword search is dictating resources be reallocated away from home page programming to landing page and network programming.
Outlined in a Jupiter report, Site and Network Navigation: Trends Force New Paradigm http://www.jupiterresearch.com/bin/i...n/63/id=99951/; JupiterResearch advises content and media companies to adopt techniques from news sites, which are ahead of most other sites in adapting to these trends. Once on a page, many old-school tricks still work (e.g., visual cueing, promoting popular and related content), and each can increase content click-through by a percentage point or two.
"Such trends as social media, website deconstruction, and broadband crossover are dictating a new site navigation and programming paradigm that is promotional and page-centric," said David Card, Vice President and Research Director at JupiterResearch. "Site programmers must blend promotion with navigation. In fact, promotion becomes navigation, especially if it incorporates users' input and participation via tactics such as 'most popular' lists."
According to the report, the "perfect" content page design should dedicate more screen real estate (40 percent to 50 percent) to the combination of navigation and promotion than to the content or story itself (20 percent to 30 percent), along with user-generated content elements (10 percent to 15 percent) and advertising (15 percent to 20 percent).
This represents a subtle change from what JupiterResearch recommended in 2004 -- that the ideal home page be dominated by editorial content, with promotion and advertising filling less than one-third of page real estate, and navigation and search constituting 10 percent to 15 percent of page space. Although it is homepage-centric, that model could be applied across a site or network.
"The Web is the vanguard of media fragmentation," said David Schatsky, President of JupiterResearch. "Content programmers have to embrace this phenomenon if they hope to retain some influence over whether, where and how consumers consume and interact with their content."
David Schatsky has overall responsibility for the vision, quality and day-to-day operation of the research products and services at JupiterResearch, LLC. He also conducts research that focuses on the systems and processes that underlie electronic commerce and the impact of new technologies on the media business.
Although 57 percent of online users navigate their favorite sites from the home page, leading sites report two-thirds of the traffic they experience arrives deep within the site from search engines. This is according to research findings from http://www.jupiterresearch.com.
Although conventional wisdom has directed content programmers to focus attention on using home pages to influence how audiences navigate through websites, the success of keyword search is dictating resources be reallocated away from home page programming to landing page and network programming.
Outlined in a Jupiter report, Site and Network Navigation: Trends Force New Paradigm http://www.jupiterresearch.com/bin/i...n/63/id=99951/; JupiterResearch advises content and media companies to adopt techniques from news sites, which are ahead of most other sites in adapting to these trends. Once on a page, many old-school tricks still work (e.g., visual cueing, promoting popular and related content), and each can increase content click-through by a percentage point or two.
"Such trends as social media, website deconstruction, and broadband crossover are dictating a new site navigation and programming paradigm that is promotional and page-centric," said David Card, Vice President and Research Director at JupiterResearch. "Site programmers must blend promotion with navigation. In fact, promotion becomes navigation, especially if it incorporates users' input and participation via tactics such as 'most popular' lists."
According to the report, the "perfect" content page design should dedicate more screen real estate (40 percent to 50 percent) to the combination of navigation and promotion than to the content or story itself (20 percent to 30 percent), along with user-generated content elements (10 percent to 15 percent) and advertising (15 percent to 20 percent).
This represents a subtle change from what JupiterResearch recommended in 2004 -- that the ideal home page be dominated by editorial content, with promotion and advertising filling less than one-third of page real estate, and navigation and search constituting 10 percent to 15 percent of page space. Although it is homepage-centric, that model could be applied across a site or network.
"The Web is the vanguard of media fragmentation," said David Schatsky, President of JupiterResearch. "Content programmers have to embrace this phenomenon if they hope to retain some influence over whether, where and how consumers consume and interact with their content."
David Schatsky has overall responsibility for the vision, quality and day-to-day operation of the research products and services at JupiterResearch, LLC. He also conducts research that focuses on the systems and processes that underlie electronic commerce and the impact of new technologies on the media business.
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