Why Scent Optimisation?
Information scent theory
A little while ago, the scientists at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) developed information scent theory (white paper reference). The research highlighted the fact that humans forage for information on the Internet in much the same way as animals follow scent and visual cues to find food. By taking a searchers mission and requirements into account and optimising accordingly, the team were able to speed up surfing behaviour dramatically (by up to 50%).
Search scent and scent optimisation
Search engines have become integral to our lives and are are very often our first port of call when looking for information, products and services. Over the years, we have monitored searcher behaviour as searchers bounce back and forth from one website to another utilising search engines as their connection platform. During this process, the majority of websites fail to deliver in presenting information in a meaningful, consistent and compelling manner.
There are a number of reasons for this which include treating all site visitors the same regardless of their knowledge level or behavioural attributes, poor use of technology, bad usability, uncompelling design and no consistenty in messaging proposition to name but a few.