Users pursue their own interest and reject whatever the site tries to push

Posted on September 26, 2008 by Catriona Cornett • 1 Comment

“Users want to construct their own experience by piecing together content from multiple sources, emphasizing their desires in the current moment. People arrive at a website with a goal in mind, and they are ruthless in pursuing their own interest and in rejecting whatever the site is trying to push.” – Jakob Nielsen

Read Jakob’s article “Writing Style for Print vs. Web” for his thoughts on how writing for the web requires a distinct content style.

Catriona Cornett

Catriona is a User Experience Designer who has helped over a dozen organizations obtain a competitive advantage by delivering great user experiences across desktop, mobile, tablet and other channels.

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Filed Under: Jakob Nielsen

http://paul-blunden.com/ Paul Blunden

I am not so sure this is true. There is an entire industry that has been created out of persuasion marketing and with the tools available to online marketers I think there is increasing influence over the user. Take stumble upon as another example. You can argue that this is the users goal but surely the site has the power. I think in this case Neilsen is outdated.