I was reading The
Wall Street Journal the other day and came across an
interesting article on "stickiness" by Thomas
Weber. Immediately, I saw in print what I've been thinking
for years: It's not how long you can keep a user on your
site, it's how well (or easily or pleasantly or enjoyably)
you allow a user to perform a desired task.
Weber makes the point succinctly
when he writes, "Sticky was stupid." He explains
that the industry's push for stickiness has been in direct
opposition to users' needs. Stickiness, he writes,
"tempts people to view a business through the lens of
steering customers to do something rather than giving them
what they want." Which is exactly right.
The long-held notion of stickiness
is that the longer any given user stays on your site, the
better. This longer stay helps in collecting ad dollars,
boosting sales, and upping the number of tasks performed
on the site. As Weber mentions, sites such as eBay,
which succeeded because millions of users spent countless
hours bidding and buying, helped perpetuate the notion
that the length of the stay was related to the value of
the business. Community became a battle cry as sites
searched for ways to increase page views and time spent.
The reality is that just like in the
real world, stickiness means success only to media-type
content sites. The more news items read, the more videos
viewed, the more minutes spent, the more ad revenue
collected, and the more ad spend commanded. All very well
and good.
If your site isn't content-focused,
stickiness can actually be a bad thing. Think about it: If
I have a specific task that I would like to complete in 5
minutes and 10 pages and I do it in 4 minutes and 7 pages,
I am happy. If it takes me 8 minutes and 15 pages, I am
not happy and am probably looking for somewhere else to go
the next time I need to complete that task. Most users
visit your site for some reason. Your objective would be
to make that visit as successful as possible. Stickiness
for the sake of stickiness should not be a goal.
Investors and analysts still may be
into sites that are sticky, but I think they'll eventually
figure it out. Stickiness is not a measure of success. My
advice is to ignore them and focus on users and on what
they need. Make this your mantra: If you build it well,
they will come... for no longer than they have to and then
leave happy.
