Web searchers are from Mars, browsers are from Venus
By Mark Bolgiano, ISG Solutions, Rockville MD
The following article was
published in Association Trends, August 22, 2003.
My wife is a browser. I am a searcher. Can this marriage be saved?
Long before websites roamed the Earth, we met in a college library.
Thinking back, it's a miracle that we did, because when it comes to seeking information,
we're completely different. We enter a library, and she heads for the shelves,
I head for the card catalog.
It's the same on the Web. She wants a feel for the outline and
hierarchy of topics, as well as a sense of location as she navigates the site.
I want to find the search box, and punch in just the right words, with quotes
around the unique phrase that will take me to the content for which I'm looking.
There's been some scholarly analysis on these 2 distinctly different
ways of getting to information, and a couple of minutes on any of the leading e-commerce
sites certainly reflect their desire to keep both styles happy.
Unlike other traits (like learning styles, buying habits and brand
preferences) there seems to be no clear correlation between browsing vs. searching
and gender, age, education level, where you live or what you do for a living.
Next time you're at the conference table with a dozen of your colleagues,
do a quick poll. You will generally find that people can easily identify which tendency
they have, and the group will be roughly split 50:50.
What does all of this mean if you're responsible for the design,
development and usability of a content-rich website? It means that you need to:
- Invest your efforts in implementing a coherent information architecture and a
high-end site search engine to meet to keep both Web user "species" happy.
- Cross-link content items and documents with metadata and your database to avoid
depending on one path to get your user to the content.
- Think about Web searches locally and globally, and using metadata to speed searches
within the Web, as well as to take users from outside searches, such as Google,
directly to the right document or data.
User expectations for convenience and usability are increasing daily.
The mainstream sites that are part of our daily lives have left the static Web brochure
far behind. The use of metadata search engines as part of a data-driven content mgmt
system represents an intersection between communications and technology. It's where
organizations might find a major factor in the success—and, in some cases, the failure—of
their websites.
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