Users Who
Scrolled Screenfuls Scrolled
Note: A "screenful" is one screen set at 1024 by 768 pixels. One screenful scrolled means seeing the initial screen plus an additional screen length below it. The statistics for scrolling only used those homepages that were so long that they stretched beyond the size of the browser window
Gone in 30 seconds: Users spend very little time on the homepage and scroll minimally, especially on subsequent visits. For simplicity, the numbers in this table are averaged across both high-experience and low-high-experience users.
Only 23 percent of users scrolled the homepage during their initial visit and even fewer scrolled on subsequent visits. This is because users knowor think they knowwhere the important areas on the homepage are after one visit. Even those few users who scrolled didn't scroll very much: less than one additional screenful on average.
Interior Page Behavior
Low-experience users who entered a site through a deep link and visited an interior page first spent an average of 60 seconds there. High-experience users spent about 45 seconds on an initial interior page visit.
One of the major reasons to support deep links is because users read substantially more content on interior pages of a site than they do on the homepage.
We see the same phenomenon for interior pages as we do for homepages: With experience, people get faster at scanning their first page view and deciding what they want to do on the site. Users spent about 70 to 80 percent more time reviewing their entry point when they entered on an interior page than they did when they entered on the homepage. This is because the interior pages they visited were more directly related to their tasks.
With 45 to 60 seconds on an interior page, users could theoretically read about 200 words, but they usually spend some of this time assessing the site's navigation system and deciding where to go next. They may read as many as 100 words of initial information, however, which is substantially more than the 10 to 20 words they read when entering on the homepage. One of the major reasons to support deep links is because users read more content on the interior pages of a site.
Homepage vs. Interior Pages
Web
Experience Time Spent on Homepage
Time Spent on Interior Page
Note: A "screenful" is one screen set at 1024 by 768 pixels. One screenful scrolled means seeing the initial screen plus an additional screen length below it. The statistics for scrolling only used those homepages that were so long that they stretched beyond the size of the browser window
Gone in 30 seconds: Users spend very little time on the homepage and scroll minimally, especially on subsequent visits. For simplicity, the numbers in this table are averaged across both high-experience and low-high-experience users.
Only 23 percent of users scrolled the homepage during their initial visit and even fewer scrolled on subsequent visits. This is because users knowor think they knowwhere the important areas on the homepage are after one visit. Even those few users who scrolled didn't scroll very much: less than one additional screenful on average.
Interior Page Behavior
Low-experience users who entered a site through a deep link and visited an interior page first spent an average of 60 seconds there. High-experience users spent about 45 seconds on an initial interior page visit.
One of the major reasons to support deep links is because users read substantially more content on interior pages of a site than they do on the homepage.
We see the same phenomenon for interior pages as we do for homepages: With experience, people get faster at scanning their first page view and deciding what they want to do on the site. Users spent about 70 to 80 percent more time reviewing their entry point when they entered on an interior page than they did when they entered on the homepage. This is because the interior pages they visited were more directly related to their tasks.
With 45 to 60 seconds on an interior page, users could theoretically read about 200 words, but they usually spend some of this time assessing the site's navigation system and deciding where to go next. They may read as many as 100 words of initial information, however, which is substantially more than the 10 to 20 words they read when entering on the homepage. One of the major reasons to support deep links is because users read more content on the interior pages of a site.
Homepage vs. Interior Pages
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Web
Experience Time Spent on Homepage
Time Spent on Interior Page
Low 35 seconds 60 seconds
High 25 seconds 45 seconds
People spend more time on interior pages than homepages. Again, people with more Web experience fly through screens at a faster pace while novice users tend to scrub the screen more carefully.
Say a user is researching music players and has arrived at the product page for iPods on Apple's Web site. On average, people read about the amount of text we have highlighted with a red box in this figure. In practice, users are not going to read these two
paragraphs word-for-word. Instead, they will scan several of the top paragraphs, reading less than half of each of them. Users will spend the remainder of their 45 to 60 seconds looking at the photos and scanning the bulleted feature list and other page elements. In total, this page contains 523 words (including a disclaimer not shown here), which would take the average user two minutes to readmore than twice the time they are likely to spend on the page. The text is written at an eighth-grade reading level, which is our recommendation for adult users, but it will be too difficult for many teenagers, who are an important target audience for this product.
[View full size image]
www.apple.com
When users visited interior pages during their browsing of a site, they spent an average of only 27 seconds on each page. This extremely short time emphasizes the importance of being crystal clear on each page about what users will get out of it. People don't have time to read everything, so they will judge pages in a few seconds.
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