Clicktale recently published some findings from their analytics data that reveal some interesting things about user behaver when it comes to scrolling. They used a subset of 120,000 page views from 11/06-12/06. Their service records the height of the web pages, the height of the window and the bottom-most location the user scrolled to.

Global Statistics

• 91% of the page-views had a scroll-bar.
• 76% of the page-views with a scroll-bar, were scrolled to some extent.
• 22% of the page-views with a scroll-bar, were scrolled all the way to the bottom.

Findings

• Visitors are likely to scan the entire page no matter the page size.

Recommendations

• Don’t try to squeeze your web page and make it more compact. There is little benefit in “squeezing” your pages since many visitors will scroll down below the fold to see your entire page.
• Since visitors will scroll all the way to the bottom of your web page, make life easier for them and divide your layout into sections for easy scanning.
• Minimize your written text and maximize images, visitors usually don’t read text – they scan web pages.
• Encourage your visitors to scroll down by using a “cut-off” layout.

I believe that some of the greatest innovations come from creativity without influence. It’s one of those things thats easier said than done. Creativity without influence involves tapping into that right-brain and letting those creative juices flow freely, it involves taking risks, and it involves exploring uncharted territory. All can be difficult things to do, but like most difficult things: the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

From Wikipedia: “Influence is a term that refers to the ability to indirectly control or affect the actions of other people or things.”

Influence is one of those things that can affect you or your work while you don’t even realize it. This post is meant to put more awareness around it, because like G.I. Joe always said, “knowing is half the battle”.

Lets take a look at a few things that play a part in influence:

Inspiration led by influence
Inspiration is very important to creativity…it gives us a purpose, it gives meaning…but in many cases inspiration is led by influence. Inspiration can also be led by a creative vision which I think is a more likely to lead to creativity without influence, and in turn a great innovation.

Credibility powered influence
There are many people and companies in the world that we look up to. They have achieved great credibility for their work or actions. It is very compelling to follow these leaders as doing so can result in achieving a similar level success or credibility for yourself. Credibility plays a big part in influence.

Commonality powered influence
Commonality is all around us. Its in our music, our fashion, our architecture, our culture, and our information. Commonality tends to influence us to keep things common.

How often have you encountered the comment: “Company X does it this way and is successful, therefore we should do it that way too”? First of all, just because a company is a leader doesn’t mean that they’re at the top of the chart. Part of thinking outside the box is seeing how much bigger the chart actually is and having the courage to explore with the potential to fail miserably or succeed greatly. After all, the laws of nature tell us that reward is almost always proportionate to the risk that precedes it. Secondly, the way that successful company X does it doesn’t mean that they’ve done it the best way…they’ve simply done it better than anyone else has to date.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think that many great things are led by influence…and creativity may never be completely free of influence. In fact, people have a hard time accepting things that are original…its easier to relate to things that we’ve seen or heard before. Normally if you see a new fashion statement or hear a new type of music, your first reaction will be a negative one…its not until you look around and see the acceptance of others that you will start to appreciate it (again, influence at work).

Creating things that are truly original is hard…mostly because they are less likely to be accepted at first. They require your influence on others to be accepted. They either crash hard or succeed greatly…with little in between.

If Mozart sat down in front of a piano with the skill of playing but has never heard music before, what would he play?

If we lived in a world where influence did not exist, what would it be like? Would it be a better place or more chaotic?

Can you identify other forms of influence?

How does influence affect you?

I recently had a frustrating yet enlightening experience at the grocery store. I pretty much hate flossing, and have found 1 product that makes it not so bad…and it’s the G.U.M. brand of disposable mini flosssers. They’re 5x more durable, and have twice the surface area of the other brands.

Anyways, the grocery store I’ve been going to appeared to have stopped carrying this brand of flossers. It was no longer in the place I normally found it (by the other floss). I devastatingly stopped buying floss for quite a while until I just recently realized that they had moved it half-way down the isle. It was now by the toothpaste hanging from one of those clip things.

Now i can see their thinking in moving it…”G.U.M. paid us more money to feature the product”…”putting products on clip things stand out more”…”products on clip things sell more than they would normally”.

While these are all good ways to market a product…they failed to keep their loyal customers in mind. If they had kept the G.U.M. brand where loyal customers could find them, and at the same time offered them on the hanging clip thing, they would have maximized their promotion and sales.

I think that this scenario is a good analogy for offering and promoting products on a website. Lets make sure that we don’t forget about our repeat and loyal customers whom we’ve trained to find things in a specific area. If you’re going to promote a product, make sure it also exists where loyal customers know they can find it. Take a look at your stats to see new vs. returning visitors so that you understand the impact of these type of decisions.

“Its about as hard to quit smoking as it is to start flossing” – Mitch Hedberg

I just watched an excellent lecture at the googleplex by professor Barry Schwartz where he explains his philosophy of “Why more is less” and how offering more selection and choices to customers leads to less choice and satisfaction.

Studies from the past 50 years have shown us that more selection and variety of features equals a better product. However, those studies failed to observe actual behavior in comparing a large selection from a refined selection.

This reinforces my belief that there is usually a difference in what people say and what they actually do…which is why its more important to observe behavior rather than opinion.

A study was performed in a super market in the UK a couple years back. On one day they set up a table and gave a selection of 20 jams for people to sample, each of those people got a $1 off coupon to use on any jam they wanted. The next day they only offered 6 jams, with a $1 off coupon.

While many more people were attracted to and sampled the 20 jam table…1/10 AS MANY PEOPLE BOUGHT JAM!

What does this tell us? More choice = fewer decisions. The more choice available, the more likely people will choose nothing. That’s a pretty powerful finding if you ask me. There are several other studies Schwarts references with similar outcomes.

I think that Barry Schwarts has some excellent points…and watching the video just may change the way you think about building products.