Web users “getting more selfish”

Website users are more interested in cutting to the chase, that is seeking whatever information they are looking for, and then moving on.

This means they don’t particularly appreciate efforts by a website owner to encourage them to stay and look around, according to usability expert Jakob Nielsen.

Bloggers will also be interested to learn that many website visitors loathe widgets, and other third party applications, as they slow down a site’s loading time, leading to visitor frustration.

“Web users have always been ruthless and now are even more so,” said Dr Nielsen. “People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience,” he said. “I do not think sites appreciate that yet,” he added. “They still feel that their site is interesting and special and people will be happy about what they are throwing at them.” Web users were also getting very frustrated with all the extras, such as widgets and applications, being added to sites to make them more friendly. Such extras are only serving to make pages take longer to load, said Dr Nielsen.