Web retention
I spent the day yesterday with a group of highly motivated people at the Digimanc conference. All were brought together by a common desire to communicate effectively about both church and kingdom. There was a whole range of skills on offer, and everyone from accomplished experts to tentative beginners in the different aspects of online communication.
One of the more memorable descriptions from the day was that of the orb spider, whose web is six times stickier that that of any other breed of spider. Like the orb spider, we were told, our web pages should be sticky so as to retain their visitors.Now it may be just because I am something of an arachnophobe, but I found that image just a little predatory. I prefer the image of a sticky burr (or ‘sweetheart’) pictured below. These little seeds are designed to attach themselves to you, and thereby be carried off to germinate elsewhere. I love the idea of designing web content which sticks in the heart and imagination so much that it is carried off by the web visitor to germinate in other fields. This has often been my experience, where an idea from a technological or current affairs website has been carried off and taken root in my theological ‘patch’.
Images: teagantimes.wordpress & dhh.louisiana.gov
Which image do you prefer?
Probably wont surprise you, but I like spiders lol I dont over analyse what I do – I just know my material goes out across the globe and the figures are consistent… But I am a simple person and thats good enough for me…
We keep any eye on how ‘sticky’ our pages are on i-church, simply because we put a lot of information about Christianity online and there’s not much point producing pages that people don’t want to look at.
I don’t see this as particularly predatory TBH – if people leave the site within seconds of arriving it means they haven’t found it interesting so we need to up our game.
I do agree though that unless people retain something helpful or useful it doesn’t matter how long they spend on your site. So ideally I would hope for ‘sticky’ pages *and* ‘sticky’ content.
I don’t think site stats should be used as a PR thing – they provide useful information for the site owners about reach and effectiveness but I don’t think numbers on their own make a site worthwhile or useless.
Sound and helpful comments as ever, Pam. Someone tweeted me this little gem earlier: “I will cling to God as the burr clings to clothes.” Katharina von Bora (Martin Luther’s wife)
Much prefer the image of the sticky burr, though not afraid of spiders.
Good metaphor either way.