Attention Time gets even smaller on the web

The annual report into web habits by usability guru Jakob Nielsen shows people are becoming much less patient when they go online.

Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave.

Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention.

Search rules

Instead, many are "hot potato" driven and just want to get a specific task completed.

Success rates measuring whether people achieve what they set out to do online are now about 75%, said Dr Nielsen. In 1999 this figure stood at 60%.

There were two reasons for this, he said.

"The designs have become better but also users have become accustomed to that interactive environment," Dr Nielsen told BBC News.

Now, when people go online they know what they want and how to do it, he said.

This makes them very resistant to highlighted promotions or other editorial choices that try to distract them.

"Web users have always been ruthless and now are even more so," said Dr Nielsen.

"People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience," he said.

"I do not think sites appreciate that yet," he added. "They still feel that their site is interesting and special and people will be happy about what they are throwing at them."

Web users were also getting very frustrated with all the extras, such as widgets and applications, being added to sites to make them more friendly.

Such extras are only serving to make pages take longer to load.
There has also been a big change in the way that people get to the places where they can complete pressing tasks.

In 2004, about 40% of people visited a homepage and then drilled down to where they wanted to go and 60% use a deep link that took them directly to a page or destination inside a site. In 2008, said Dr Nielsen, only 25% of people travel via a homepage. The rest search and get straight there.

Basically search engines rule the web

FLASH Player 10 !!

Adobe on Thursday is expected to launch a beta test program for the latest version of its Flash Player software.

Flash Player 10, developed under the code name Astro, includes better support for 3D animation and video hardware acceleration, among other improvements.

Adobe said that Flash Player 10 will now support custom visual effects, created with Adobe's free Pixel Bender tools. Developers can write code to create effects that can be rendered by Flash Player at runtime.

Developers can also now target code to render through graphics processors, speeding up performance and freeing CPU bandwidth, Adobe says.

The beta version of Flash Player 10 will be available from Adobe's Labs site.

Flash Player 10 will run on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Mac OS X and Linux.

Adobe said that some of the new features in Flash Player 10 will ultimately be incorporated into a future release of Adobe AIR and the Open Screen Project, Adobe's movement to create industry consensus around Flash-based technologies for mobile devices.

Banner Ads : Best Practices

Some best practices and tactics for getting the most out of your banners and creative optimization:
* Create a benefit matrix around products. People typically think, "How will you help me?" and "What do you have for me right now?" List those genuine benefit statements and catalog the offers you can make right now.
* Choose the measure first, then the message. Decide how you'll measure the banner's success, then focus the banner's message, offer, and call to action on achieving that metric. (That may seem obvious, but we see disconnects between those two factors all the time.) If you can't map your message to your metric, chances are it won't work.
* Looking for leads? Sell the lead conversion event in the banner and landing page. Tell them why they want to download the whitepaper and give you their info, not why they should buy your expensive technology product or service. Let your marketing escalation and salespeople do that.
* Keep it short. Don't make people cycle through 20 seconds of slides to get the point of your offer. Make it three frames, max, two to three seconds each frame. If it takes more than three seconds to communicate your message, you're too verbose. Get right to the payoff by using reverse-pyramid style copywriting. Start with the payoff and follow with the lead in or supporting facts.
* Use the power of suggestion. Tell people what you want them to do. Do want them to click now, download now, access now, get now, or sign up now? Tell them.
* Use a static call to action. Your call to action should appear on all slides, not just the last slide of a looping animation. On horizontal banners, place the offer or call to action on the right side. People read left to right, so their eyes will end on the offer or call to action. On skyscraper banners, place your static offer or call to action on the top and bottom of the banner. And be sure to use large fonts and contrasting colors.
* Treat your banner like a billboard. Your banner must stand out and communicate your message as if people were passing it in a fast-moving car.
* Use variety. Use a wide variety of graphical treatments so all your banner concepts look very different from one another. Even with different offers, if all your banners look similar at first glance, chances are they'll perform at the same level. If one tanks, they'll all tank.
* Keep offers simple. One benefit, one offer. Don't put multiple offers in one banner.
* Deliver on your offer right away. Land people on instant conversion pages that deliver on the offer.