What Makes People Click: The Web as a Medium

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What Makes People Click:
Marketing an IEP on the Web
The following was prepared as part of a Demonstration held at TESOL 2003, Baltimore, MD, USA, in March. It is an ongoing project. Go to the Main page to see the rest or take a look at work that has already been done for previous presentations:
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The Web as a Medium

One way the web is different from print media is that the user can get information and order the product with the same motion: at the same place and time, with the same actions. As of this writing, at least in the US, the web has taken over much of the book-selling industry, much of the travel industry, and several others, partly because of this phenomenon. While it is similar that a university can offer the same, accurate and complete information along with the opportunity to apply or enroll, all with the same actions and at the same site, buying an education is clearly not the same as buying a book, and we can expect a prospective student, and his or her family, to do considerably more research before buying the education.

Before we start, we should consider some of the ways the web is different from the print media. First, webpages are connected to other places on the web, and they are almost always connected via backbutton to where the user has been, unless the designer has used Flash or frames, or in some other way gone to the trouble to disable the user's backbutton, which is a mistake (1). Thus the user has more control over where he/she is going, and when. A pageview on the web is different on the web from a pageview in, say, a directory of universities, primarily by what the user has just seen and what he/she will see next, and the degree of choice he/she has over that process. Second, a webpage combines the characteristics of a neon sign with those of a brochure, to some degree, because we are really dealing with human responses to light, and color as shown with light, which are similar to responses to neon signs and their accompanying short attention span, but webpages have the same power as a brochure to convey some important information, for example, price of a program, schedule, etc., thus drawing the reader into some analysis of important facts.

Web behavior

People can measure what users do on the computer, and have started doing it in earnest. One of the most useful ways of seeing what we do on the web is through the already-established verbs we've chosen to describe it. We started with "surf," which gave the idea of newness, fun, skating across the top of something, and entering with a splash, perhaps against one's will. We used "browse" for a while, but that conveys the idea of never really quite reading anything at all. The newest one is "forage," which is really much more accurate, since it conveys the idea of looking for something specific, being somewhat purposeful and serious in the search, and, when finding it, partaking liberally and methodically. This is how people search. Your own instinctual feeling about your own behavior on the web is a good place to start. Why would anyone else be that much different?

Your audience

You may want your program website primarily to attract new students, especially from places you've never gotten students from. Join the club. Undoubtedly, they're out there, sitting by their computer, looking for a place to live and study English. But keep in mind, you probably need your webpage (and/or web system) to do other things as well. Some prospective students have already heard of your program and even intend to apply, but want more information, or suddenly have access to the web and decide to look you up on a lark. Others are already studying at your program and just become aware of the web and your presence on it. In any case, it is important that your site not only draw the casual viewer, but not seem too cloying to the ones who are already in the system.

The web and the world

Looking at the web and its function in the world today, it is easy to be cynical. Since the market crash of April 2000 and the low times since then, when the bloom went off the rose of web development, it has been prevailing wisdom of the business world that web advertising is overpriced; that banners are ignored by most viewers; and that the web as a free giveaway of information and resources is an unsustainable ecology. There is truth to these kernels of wisdom, but consider the flipside:

The web is here to stay; it is already the world's phonebook (though it is more than that, since it has images, connections, and capacity to carry content unheard of in the yellow pages); not having a webpage is now being viewed with the same suspicion as not having a phone number (2).

Banners do work; people click on them (a whole industry has sprouted around measuring responses to them); and since Yahoo has started using Google, and other search engines have followed Google's model, having other sites point to yours is indeed good for your search engine ranking, even if it doesn't draw any customers.

"Free giveaways" have been part of marketing and advertising since the beginning of time; there is nothing wrong with showing a customer that you have a high-quality product; that you know what you're doing; and that you and your teachers use the web and can teach people to use it, which will provide them with skills that will certainly be necessary for them in their future.

Color and the human psyche

A few years back I ran across a tidbit of information: that yellow was the most commonly clicked-on color for banners. I have been unable to track down the exact proof or even any carefully explained reasons for this. My own theory is that yellow is active, like red and pink, but unlike red and pink, yellow is welcoming, calm and non-threatening at the same time. Blue, green and brown, while being welcoming, calm and non-threatening, do not stimulate the user enough to make him/her click. OK, so this is a reasonable theory, though completely unconfirmed and unproven, let alone true across cultures. But here's another question. What if your button is yellow, but it appears on a page with a number of other yellow buttons, since everybody has gotten onto this bit of knowlege? In a page of yellow buttons, you'd want a different color, I'd imagine. But once again, this is just a theory. What I'm saying is that if you choose to use buttons, what will be important to you, along with the overall impression of the image itself, and whatever message it conveys, is the color, and the way that color reacts with the environment it's in (3).

The glory of the computer is that you can actually prove these theories by experience; you can measure clickthroughs, and you can quantify environments as in the above situation with real data, and not go on impression alone, as the print media analysts seem to do (4). I challenge you to do it. Good luck!

Footnotes:

1. It has been said that 40% actions on the web is backbutton (Whitfield 2002); that virtually wherever people go, they return, so that an accurate model of web exploration would more closely resemble a scout going forward in different directions and always returning to base (the base often being a search page of Google or some other search engine) as opposed to a scout going out, choosing to change directions, and exploring in concentric circles around a base. Thus we can imagine why a user would be angry to have his/her backbutton disabled, especially if foraging from a unique search.

2. This can be illustrated by a story. In 2002 my wife needed information about a prominent bookseller and immediately turned to Google to find it. Upon finding that this academic book publisher had no webpage, she said, "What a bogus operation! What kind of a place is this?"

3. While contrast is generally recognized to be good, white and black offer the best contrast, but offer poor click-through ratios (CTR's), probably because they don't offer the user an desirable emotional path (Thurow 2003).

4. Actually, the print media have extensive data about people's reaction to color, but of course it is impossible to measure if that reaction is directly responsible for any given purchase. The mere fact that they have been doing it for so long gives more credence to general theories about responses to advertising, but the direct relationship of reaction to response is more easily quantified in computer environments.

Sources:

Kotwica, K. (1999, July 30). Survey: Web Site Navigation. Cyber Behavior Research Center. http://www.cio.com/research/behavior/edit/survey6.html

Nielsen, Jakob (2000). Eyetracking study of web readers. Alertbox 5/14/2000. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000514.html.

Nielsen, Jakob (1999). Differences between print design and web design. Alertbox 1/24/99. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html

Thurow, S. (2003). Choose the best colors for your banner ads. WorkZ.com. http://www.workz.com/cgi-bin/gt/tpl_page.html,content=1412&template=15&nav1=1&user=ffffffffff

Whitfield, J. (2002, Dec. 30). Browsers go back to the future. Nature, Science update. a href="http://www.nature.com/nsu/021230/021230-3.html

Resources:

Insta-link web dictionary: explains web terms for the novice. http://www.inslink.com/Dictionary/dicta-e.htm

The Web as a Medium, a bibliography

Color Links, Univ. of Minnesota-Duluth

Copyright Thomas Leverett, 2003

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Thomas Leverett, CESL, SIUC
Photo above (Spider Web) by Jim Leverett.

What Makes People Click: Marketing an IEP on the Web

The Web as a Medium

What Makes People Click:
Marketing an IEP on the Web