Measuring Interactivity

Back in the day there was a great deal of discussion around “stickiness” - for all I know it’s still happening. The idea was that your website needed to hold users’ attention for longer than the original destination page - you wanted them to click around, get involved, bookmark you for later, whatever. All of this is still true, but with all of the content layers across the top of the web, there are new concepts around what you want to see. Comments on the blog, for example, or subscribers, or what have you. In part because of the new social interactions that occur on the web, however, there have been few valid tools to measure a website’s interactivity as compared to others, or in the context of the users who visit and engage.

Over at the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication this quarter, there’s a stellar article that wrestles with that very issue. In “A Multifaceted Tool for a Complex Phenomenon: Coding Web-Based Interactivity as Technologies for Interaction Evolve,” the authors discuss the axes along which one needs to observe interaction. Specifically, they write, researchers need to assess human to computer, human to human, and human to content interactions to fully comprehend how “interactive” a website is. The paper provides some purely methodological suggestions for continuing the academic discussion, but of particular interest to us are “Considerations for Practitioners,” which is excerpted in part here:

Unlike other mass media, the internet offers the technological opportunity to create an individualized experience that could further enhance the sense of a personal relationship with the content creator. One somewhat unexpected finding was that action functions (unlike navigation and transaction functions) are more likely to be personalized than standardized. This may suggest that the easiest area to enhance personalization on Web sites such as those examined in this study would be increase action features. For example, visitors could engage with the sites more fully through quizzes, surveys, games, and other activities that require minimal programming input but allow the individual more opportunities to interact with the site.

This, at last, explains why everyone knows which Stooge they are, but won’t read your blog. It also articulates the need for web experiences to be at least partially based in play. Sandbox-style webtoys can build a significant following. If done right, they might even teach the users about the brand, as well.

Go forth and innovate around interactivity. But read the whole article first. Your eyes may cross a bit during methodology, but hold fast. It’s worth every word.