What Facebook, Google and FoxNews have in Common
Highlights of ForeSee Results report on the ACSI E-Business study (Creative Commons) that was released today:
“Social Media: Customer satisfaction with social media sites is poor (70) as the industry enters the Index for the first time. It has the lowest industry aggregate score of any of the e-business or e-retail industries measured by the ACSI. Wikipedia leads the social media industry with a score of 77, which is 14 points above industry giant Facebook.com (64), a surprisingly low performer given its market presence.”
I will add my 2 cents here: it is very difficult to a get a site that tries to do too many things to work for the average consumer: the simpler the interface, the better. (This Moviepals.org example combines over 200 advanced features for collaborative video production and distribution with a clean and simply graphic user interface)
The dilemma, for social network website design company like us, is to provide more and more features, which once were expensive, for free; and still to maintain a simple interface that allows the gradual adaptation that supports the learning curve of the visitors: if it is easy to get started, the visitors will eventually learn about the more advanced features: it is like what we used to call a “puppy dog close” in copy machine sales: in this case it is a “puppy dog learning curve” that is the rule online: example:
“How much is that puppy dog in the window?”
“I’ll check, would you like to hold him while I see?”
It is a good idea if it takes a while to look up the price (in our case, to charge anything at all), because by the time the clerk returns, the prospect has bonded with the dog: exactly like a free user does with an anonymous profile on an online online dating site, and like all of us did with a search box named Google, and with ‘friends’ on Myspace.com and Facebook.com, etc.
However, as the application grows, the user interface becomes more and more busy, and that makes it intimidating to new users:
More from the Report:
“News and Information Sites: Customer satisfaction with news and information sites stays even this year at 74. The big news in this industry is the debut of FoxNews.com at the top of the heap with a score of 82, which is five points above nearest competitor USA Today.com (77). CNN.com brings up the rear (73).”
LOL (for you non-techies that means ‘laughing out loud’): I personally watch Fox News often online, and the interface is great and the news is accurate in my humble opinion: again a result of the gradual shift of power from the top-down architecture of the main stream media, to the “Meritocracy” of user-generated, user-filtered content sites that are more and more important as sources of news, and that have increasing influence and reach: this trend is a parabolic curve:
“Portals and Search Engines: Customer satisfaction with portals and search engines dives 7% to 77 this year and is driven largely by a 7% decline for Google (down six points to 80). “
Again, Google keeps adding features, making the interface more and more complicated, and creating more and more opportunities for non tech-savvy consumers to be dissatisfied if they have not already learned the interface – which, BTW, I find to be completely intuitive and easy to navigate in spite if it’s robust depth.
“Bing was measured for the first time this year, and it makes a strong first showing with a score of 77, second only to Google.”
This may be the biggest thing to watch in the report: Bing is gaining back market share, and the search engine and browser wars will not be over any time soon!
You can download the study here:
http://www.foreseeresults.com/research-white-papers/ACSI-e-business-repo
rt-2010.shtml
CC: The Author of the study, Larry Freed, President & CEO for ForeSeeResults.com, can be reached through Daniel Rosenberg, Social Media Specialist at ForeSeeResults.com
Thanks to them for sending me this report, which is available in PDF format by email: Daniel.Rosenberg@ForeSeeResults.com
BTW, our latest attempts at integrating over 200 functions (and still having a user friendly ‘graphic user interface’ called a GUI) is here:
Moviepals Open Cinema Collaborative Video
One Response 
Leave a Reply 
Thank you. Great stuff.