What people want online is a question guerrillas ask themselves a lot. Whether it's for fun or work or something else, understanding a consumer's motives once he or she logs on is a necessity. But
experts don't seem to agree on what people want. Some folks see web as a vast, new field for advertising messages, assuming that while people may want to do something else, if we can entice them with flash, we can sort of trick them into paying attention to our products and services.
Guess what. That's not gonna happen.
Other folks seem to subscribe to notion that people online are looking for entertainment on Internet, and therefore they construct messages aimed at persuading while playing. And, in other cases, time-honored direct-response model wins out: Grab people when you can, get 'em to take an action, and then market, market, market. The answer may be that consumer has and wants a lot more control than we give him/her credit for.
Today, webmeisters are in control. Sort of. In a perfect cyberworld, people will be in control. Sort of.
Two recent studies shed light upon this dilemma. One was conducted by Zatso. The other was conducted by Pew Research Center. Zatso and Pew. (Those guys didn't spend much time reading "how-to-name-your-company" books, I guess.) Still, both of their studies illuminated answer as to what people want to do online.
The answer, as most answers, is very utilitarian: People want to accomplish something online. They're not aimless surfers hoping to discover a cybertreasure. Instead, average Net user turns out to be a goal-oriented person interested in finding information and communicating with others -- in doing something he or she set out to do.
Look at Zatso study. "A View of 21st Century News Consumer" looked at people's news reading habits on web. It revealed that reading and getting news was most popular online activity after email. The guerrilla thinks, "That means email is number one. How might I capitalize on that?"
One out of three respondents reported that they read news online every day, with their interests expanding geographically -- local news was of most interest, U.S. news least.
Personalization was seen as a benefit, too. Seventy-five percent of respondents said that they wanted news on demand and nearly two out of three wanted personalized news. The subjects surveyed liked idea that they, not some media outlet, controlled news they saw. They feel they're better equipped to select what they want to see than a professional editor. Again, control seems to be issue. Again, guerrillas think of ways to market by putting prospect in control.
