How important is a great online experience?

People spend hours on the internet every day and the online is now the extension of our existence. This daily interaction has become an important factor for those offering services on the internet and because we all know that in general, time is money, the time on the internet is indeed money. This is why the experience we have online has become more meaningful and is getting more attention.

How do people interact with the internet? What drives them to a certain website and what makes them feel their time online was well spent? What are they looking for: products, information or entertainment? These are the main questions in the online world. No matter their final purpose, the key factor to bear in mind is that every user has a selective behavior when he is browsing through the internet. You, me and anyone using the internet has become a highly professional scanner that will only stop when something caught his attention and feels that he found that relevant information matching his search.

Every perspective deserves attention

Enhancing the user experience online goes both ways: it is important for everyone using the internet to find what they want and how they want it and of course it is crucial for those offering the content, the product or the information because they need to attract visitors to their websites.

Nowadays managing the user experience had become a top priority for the online world. Therefore, we need to think from different perspectives when we tackle this subject. We are not interested in the web optimization here, but in the different approaches we have when we are surfing the internet.

What determines the user to stay online?

As active internauts we see hundreds of web pages each month and of course, not all of them catch our attention. So what determines us to click on the bookmark button that will take us back over and over again?

It is said that it takes us less than a second to judge a web page and this is because we can perceive astonishingly fast what doesn’t look good. The colors, the images, the layout of the page, we take everything into consideration when it comes to the visual perception. If the page passed this test, another important aspect is next: can I find here what I was looking for? If yes, I should find that information fast, otherwise I will go to the next result on the search engine. Furthermore, if the vital information is here it should be easy to browse through and the website should respond fast to the commands. Of course, these are just some clues that will guide us to the final decision, but they are definitely the ones to consider first. We are literally bombarded with all sorts of information, images, advertising or videos no matter what we are doing online. This is why it is important to keep it simple and don’t overload the user with irrelevant content.

The online experience is for everyone

Some of us are probably aware that after hours spent online the intimacy of our minds has been almost violated. We want a better online experience, thus they have to know us better, to understand our behavioral patterns so they can enhance this experience for us.  Nevertheless, we should think at the online experience as a win-win situation. If we want to make the time online worthwhile, our behavior is a key that will give them solutions for our problems.