A new science

Following up on my previous post, we need a new science of how users decide what to consume when foraging for information on the Internet. As I read through the current issue of Shelf Impact!, our digital publication targeted at consumer packaged goods marketers, I was struck by how closely those companies study their consumers.

If you think about consumers shopping in a grocery store, there are many parallels with consuming information on the Web: Consumers are usually in a hurry, have a good idea of what they want to find going in, experience sensory overload during their consumption experience (bombarded with 30,000 items in a typical shopping visit), and give each purchase decision only a few seconds.

In response to such a brutal environment, packaged goods marketers have evolved the study of consumers to a high art, going far beyond mere focus groups and instead actually living with consumers as they shop and use their products.

As publishers, I think we can benefit from the same in-depth study of our consumers so we cam really understand how readers decide when to give their attention. We need to actually sit with readers as they embark on a normal online information consumption experience, and talk to them about it.

What follows was taken from an article published in a recent issue of of Shelf Impact! of E&J Gallo Winery studies consumers, but adapted (by me) to the field of online publishing.

1. Have icebreakers prepared. Get into your interviewee’s mind-set. Ask what their top three concerns are right now. Ask open-ended questions (and enjoy silent interludes). Mine interviewees for their moods and values.

2. Once online, what do they click on, and why? When do they decide to start a search at a major engine like Google vs. going directly to a more vertical information site like a publisher's? How do they find the specific content that they're looking for? What is their strategy? What attributes, do they use to compare among links that might fit what they're looking for?

3. Watch how information is consumed. How does the interviewee use the content? How many clicks? How deep do they go? Are they more linear or more hypertextual? Was anything awkward, unusual, or unexpected?

4. Debrief the interview. Review your notes for those “aha” moments. Which behaviors and assumptions were confirmed? What this user typical or unusual? Compare notes with users who were studied.

5. Recap the project. This should be done before the end of the week of the interviews, while information and observations are fresh.

6. Create a record. Include visual stimulations, and create a video record or even a photo album of your encounter with each consumer who was interviewed.

The hard part, of course, is translating insights gained from such a study into a stellar user experience that benefits the user and the publisher. But armed with such information, publishers will have a much stronger idea of what works, possibly leading to entirely new paradigms of how to publish online.

In this era of information overload, users are forming information filtration and consumption patterns that we must understand if we're going to serve them properly.