A new report and seminar from Media Management Center

Many online users stick to a few favorite Web sites while ignoring an infinite number of alternatives, a strong habit that is hard to break for those Web sites seeking users' attention, according to a new study by Northwestern's Media Management Center.

The report titled, "What It Takes to be a Web Favorite," is based on joint research by MMC and the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. Noting that users form particularly strong habits when it comes to news, the report concludes that news Web sites must strive to be on a user’s short list of three to five favorite sites or be lost among hundreds of largely overlooked alternatives. This poses particular challenges for local sites, because major national events and sources are currently more important to many users than local ones.

The Web favorites report makes clear that being perceived as “easy to use” is the single most important factor in determining Web favorites.

• MMC has already conducted follow-up research to pinpoint in much more detail what consumers mean when they say a Web site is "easy to use."


• That research will be released at a new MMC seminar, Beyond Commodity: Customer-Focused Strategy for Digital Media, October 5-8, 2008 at Northwestern.


• The conference also will provide additional detail and explore the implications for people who manage news of the Web Favorites and Easy to Use research projects, as well as from a third MMC released Monday (October 8, 2008), exploring how to engage young adults in election news on the Web.

To download the complete report, go to: www.mediamanagementcenter.org/research/webfavorite.pdf.

"To make the 'favorite' list, being unique isn't particularly helpful because so few sites can truly deliver unique content," said Stacy Lynch, MMC associate and author of the study. "What really matters is being 'easy to use.' This goes beyond being attractive to presenting information in a way that makes sense and avoids the problem of being 'too much.'"

These results reflect in-depth interviews with 27 heavy online users in the Atlanta and Chicago markets. Participants were asked to identify and describe "favorite" Web sites and to explain why they chose them over other alternatives. The research found:

• Many of users' preferences are driven by a desire to manage and cope with overwhelming amounts of information and a seemingly infinite number of choices online. Web users performed a variety of techniques to sort and sift information more easily and, when that failed, to limit the amount of information coming in. Light news consumers, in particular, struggled with the volume and perceived sameness of news and information online. As they described the experience of sifting through the daily news, they expressed feelings of being overwhelmed and bored by the monotony.


• Online users have strong Web habits that rarely change. Participants described a routine focusing on three to five "favorite" Web sites that they have used for at least several years. Habitual behavior appears to be even more pronounced for news and information Web sites, with strong preferences for familiar sites.


• The experience of getting news online varied greatly depending on the knowledge and experience users brought to the task. Unlike light users, heavy news consumers enjoyed sites with large amounts of information. They also required very few cues in order to figure out which items were important or interesting.


• For Web sites with a traditional media "parent," much of their perceived personality and functional benefits are borrowed from that parent. Television Web sites were seen as being more up-to-date than newspaper counterparts because "television broadcasts several times a day while the newspaper publishes only once."


• Brand has power. For "cognitive misers" trying to sift through the almost infinite choices online, familiar brands have a lot of weight. Users often looked for sources that were familiar from other contexts – TV watchers tended to choose TV Web sites, for example.


• Looking at news online is really a variety of different kinds of activities. Participants described different occasions when they are scanning the news, searching for something specific or taking a break.

Media Management Center is an executive education, research and development institute at Northwestern University.

For more information contact Stacy Lynch (stacy.l.lynch @gmail.com) or Vivian Vahlberg (v-vahlberg@northwestern.edu).

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A new survey from the Media Management Center at Northwestern University focuses in on the importance of being among a users top three to five choices for a given subject in order not to be overlooked and forgotten about. ...

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