I have a fair amount of nostalgia about flying as a child. I remember with a fondness those airplane safety manuals, the first time I got to visit a cockpit and got pinned with my first set of wings, getting a pack of playing cards from the stewardess so my sister and I could play go fish or cribbage, and so on. And those SkyMall magazines – those wonderful, quirky marketing wonders that held all those exotic products that solved all of life’s little difficulties. You could only annoy your sibling with those directional air ventilators for so long before you found yourself rummaging in the seat pocket through the magazines. The airplane represents the quintessential environment for captive audiences – with nowhere to go, you’re everything short of forced to browse SkyMall.
I remember another captive audience situation I found myself in that wasn’t so nostalgic. My wife and I were in Hawaii on vacation and signed up for a tour of a facility that produced pearls and coral jewelry and gifts. It all started with them loading us and about twenty other tourists on a chartered bus. We were offered a glass of wine during the ride while the tour guide gave us a spiel about the company’s divers and how they sustainably harvest materials from the sea floor. Next we found ourselves getting off the bus and directed into the facility, which was a labyrinth of hallways with windows into museum-like display rooms and videos that showed the divers at work. In the end, we were funneled onto a large showcase room, where several sales associates proceeded to hard-sell us on expensive jewelry items.
These are real situations, both good and bad, that we find ourselves in as consumers from time to time. We’re constrained, we’re systematically compelled, we’re captives.
I was told, ad nauseam, that the only way to clearly show my wife that I still loved her was to buy her a $1,500 string of pearls. We were captives – the only exit was clear across the showroom, hidden behind some trade-booth walls and low hanging lights. The only way out was through the sales associates, and it was questionable whether we would make it out alive or not.
These are real situations, both good and bad, that we find ourselves in as consumers from time to time. We’re constrained, we’re systematically compelled, we’re captives. When it comes to the internet, however, we’re none of those things. A colleague of mine recently told me that it would be a mistake to link off to another site because it could mean losing a captive audience. Not only is this fundamentally untrue, but it’s a dangerous approach to thinking about UX and the basic needs of your users. In an age largely dominated by search and API-first infrastructure, the user is king, and there are several compelling reasons why the internet, rightly so, is not the domain of captivity.
Low Switching Costs
Your users are constantly one of many touchpoints away from bouncing from your site – clicking out, closing their browser, abandoning a purchase, etc. Sure, sometimes the reasons are because you’re not doing a good job of compelling them to take an action, but there are plenty of external reasons that users exit.
Bounce rates get a bit of a bad rap – there are scenarios in which bounce rates, even high ones, are healthy.
Bounce rates get a bit of a bad rap – there are scenarios in which bounce rates, even high ones, are healthy. A high bounce rate can mean that the page in question has done a good job of explaining or covering the topic of interest, and the user is now off to gather a different context, to compare products and pricing, or perhaps to get some other, maybe tangible, affairs in order before making a decision. I talk to companies and managers all the time who are trying to find ways of drastically reducing or even eliminating their bounce rates, often without a clear understanding of what a bounce rate indicates or how it might be aligned with their goals and primary UX actions. With a strong sense of your site’s core and how it aligns with your strategic goals, some A/B testing is all it takes to “optimize” your bounce rates and other key metrics.
Unless you install malicious software with the intent to infect your users’ devices so that they’re locked onto a page, the fact is web transactions, by themselves, have low or even no switching costs. As internet marketers, we have to be compelling without being restrictive.
Low Hanging Fruit
Some recent studies have shown that we use the internet much in the same way that our hunter-gatherer ancestors kept themselves fed and clothed. We hunt for what we want, and we’ll keep hunting, regardless of where the trail leads, so long as we feel that we’re still tracking what we’re after and making progress. I rarely, for example, rely on just one site or app to get my news. I might see something that interests me on Twitter, click into it, and then leave the site to corroborate the story elsewhere or research a particular topic. It’s virtually impossible for a news organization to provide the entire context and scope of information in regards to a news item or topic. Rather than trying to keep an audience captive by trying to cover everything, it’s better to be the expert or leading authority (again, be compelling without being restrictive) and control the acquisition channel(s). There’s plenty of reason to think, in fact, that overwhelming your user with too much information or context will drive them away and dissuade them from adding that item to their cart.
Wikipedia might come the closest of any site to attaining captivity status. One can certainly click from topic to topic and not need to leave the confines of wikipedia.org in their quest of knowledge. Wikipedia brilliantly delivers comprehensive content as low hanging fruit. But even Wikipedia relies heavily on outside sources and articles to fill it’s pages, and you just won’t get the same user experience reading a wiki article on NASA, for example, as you will from going to NASA’s site. Both are valuable, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.
Low Investment, Long Tail
It’s estimated that 140,000 website get created every day worldwide, and there are well over 1 billion websites in existence. Talk about redundant information. SEO is largely a battle for the attention of users who’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, and who demand information faster and faster. Speed trumps accuracy, most of the time. The internet’s tail is long – you can find over 16 million articles on Google related to “How to Mix a Martini.” For this reason, the API market has expanded, in part, as a response to the need to link information more accurately and appropriately. Rather than thinking in terms of a singular site that needs to dominate the information landscape on a particular topic or for a particular niche, one should consider what a system of information around the topic or niche looks like, and how it might be navigated. Persona development comes in handy in this regard – try to obtain an accurate picture of who your users are, what channels of communication they prefer, and what auxiliary systems, sites or services they consume. Partner, as much as you can, with these complimentary systems and mediums. Or try to buy them out. Just don’t waste your time trying to recreate content that might presented better or more prominently elsewhere.
Repeat this Mantra: Quality Over Quantity
There’s a massive spectrum of sites and systems, in terms of core purpose, to be sure. Ever site on the web could be described as falling on a sliding scale of “approaching a captive experience” in some sort of terms: from SAAS vendors’ marketing sites to sprawling government sites. But the very nature of the internet is ease of access and delivery of information. Since it’s virtually impossible to win at quantity, go for quality. Chances are, my 16,000,001th article on how to mix a martini isn’t going add a whole lot to the conversation, unless it’s truly innovative and offers something new and highly valuable to martini lovers.
With enough marketing savvy and the right strategy, you can certainly create perceived switching costs and increase a user’s reliance on your site or application, which will lead to better click-throughs and conversions.
There’s nothing wrong with striving for something that resembles a captive experience. With enough marketing savvy and the right strategy, you can certainly create perceived switching costs and increase a user’s reliance on your site or application, which will lead to better click-throughs and conversions. Just don’t insult your users or take them for granted. Do your homework, develop your personas and strategies with care. Be aware of the competition and complementary systems and applications, and strive for the best experience that you can deliver, given the big picture.