When taking a stock of things that happened in 2008, I was thinking of few terms in Web world which have ruled the market. Some of the terms which came to my mind were mash-ups, web services, micro-blogging, social networking etc. A major challenge faced by every website in 2008 was to increase stickiness and engagement of the web site so that the user spends maximum time on web site.
There is a subtle difference between stickiness and engagement which makes a huge difference on how you design your web page. A fine balance must be struck between stickiness and engagement.
Stickiness concerns itself with keeping the user on the page whereas engagement has to do with keeping user involved in doing something. Most engagement tools (hyperlinks, buttons, blog links etc) actually drive the user away from the webpage, thus reducing stickiness. On the other hand stickiness enhancing tools (widgets, mash-ups, RSS feeds etc) end up in a one-way communication, eliminating engagement.
Below is a graph which shows Engagement vs. Stickiness.
Websites which are designed for Content Syndication is an example of high stickiness, but low engagement.
iGoogle / Gaming websites are a good example of website which has high engagement but low stickiness.
When we write an article and just provide few related references of other articles/websites, has neither engagement nor stickiness.
Posts
1 comment:
Are there some ways with the help of which one can increase the engagement of site users ? I installed some toolbar and games for this purpose but that didn't worked well.
user engagement
Post a Comment