I came across an article the other day that got me thinking for a while. It’s about the Google Effect - on reading and writing habits. A particular sentence haunted my mind when I first read it.
Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, and begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
Why? Because it’s describing my reading habits. In the past, most people would be able to focus on a specific theme or subject and read about it for as long as their concentration would allow them. But Google created a system in which you are always compelled towards jumping to the next page, searching something deeper by clicking on a hyperlink on the text, or simply click the “Back” button because the first two lines of the article just didn’t interest you enough. So what is happening is that more and more people are becoming all around knowledge databases instead of specialists of a given subject - not only do the specialists are becoming more valued in the work marketplace but also brands are struggling to keep their audiences interested.
I could go on ranting on the subject, but the fact is that you already lost interest in the first paragraph. In case you didn’t, I recommend you thoroughly read the article in question - although long, it shows you the shift that Google is causing in our learning patterns. As a Marketeer, you should take that in account - you audience is becoming less concentrated and if you want to captivate them you should consider a strategic high-impact approach on the first contact they have with your Brand. Deepening the contact should come in an N-2 phase. Otherwise, you might have lots of page views - but a very little returning rate or page time, as your consumers will probably be clicking around somewhere else to jump to the next subject.
So true. I believe I haven’t been able to finish a single book since I’ve had an RSS reader, always providing me with something new to read. And it’s worse now with an iPhone in my pocket, carrying around my emails, favorite TV series, websites, applications… I remember finding so much joy in buying a dozen of books at the beginning of summer when I was a teenager, and then spending the warm days under a tree or by a swimming-pool with Zola, Camus, Barjavel… Today, reading a book sounds like mono-tasking torture. I was at the beach yesterday but spent more time replying to me emails and on Facebook than trying to go through the last 20 pages of Beigdeber’s novel that I had opened for the first time more than 6 months ago…
Great article Luis, I see your point. Although I enjoy finishing reading a book, that unique feeling of accomplishment. Like if was the end of a journey. It’s just that because of the Internet, nowdays I just make my literary journeys with lots of checkpoints. Yeah, It also takes me months to finish reading a book.
You focused a very important issue, website traffic pattern studies. As a webdesigner/webmaster, one should have the control of the website’s traffic - thus keeping the users focused on what you want them to be focused in.