[IxDA Discuss] Yahoo! Traffic to Yahoo! Mail

[tristan blanc-brude]

Hi,

Interesting findings, I'm wondering also how many people access Yahoo! Mail
from a search engine instead of typing in the url (that would probably mean
that they don't use Yahoo! to search)

cheers

Tristan


2007/3/1, Todd Zaki Warfel <lists at toddwarfel.com>:
>
> I'm curious about something that perhaps some of our fellows at
> Yahoo! can shed some light on. I'm wondering what percent of visitors
> access Yahoo! Mail from the Yahoo! home page rather than directly
> from Yahoo! Mail. Also, are there any stats that indicate how many
> people have their home page set to Yahoo! vs. something else?
>
> Here's some context. A few years ago we were working w/Cornell for a
> site that combines content with a number of applications. Similar in
> that respect to Yahoo! Some of the directors argued that people don't
> come in through the home page, but rather directly by bookmarking the
> project/application. Our research was indicating otherwise. Based on
> traffic analysis and ethnographic-based interviews, we found a little
> over 70% actually typed in the main URL and then accessed the
> application. The reasons? Well, we found the following contributed:
> 1. The main domain was easier to remember than the domain to the app
> 2. It's very typical to have an unmanageable, unnavigable list of
> bookmarks. So, while people were bookmarking things, they tended to
> avoid their bookmarks when possible - "I need a way to search through
> and organize my bookmarks."
> 3. Members/participants/customers were often accessing from work and
> their work machines had default home pages set to the company
> intranet page - they never changed it.
>
> So, does anyone have data that either validates, or challenges these
> findings? Again, I think Yahoo! is probably the closest to the model
> we were up against.
>
> (BTW, I know the most correct answer is to simply look at the log
> files for the current site/application, but you know how stake
> holders and researchers (like me) like to get additional data).
>
>
> Cheers!
>
> Todd Zaki Warfel
> Partner, Design & Usability Specialist
> Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully.
> ----------------------------------
> Contact Info
> Voice:  (215) 825-7423
> Email:  todd at messagefirst.com
> AIM:    twarfel at mac.com
> Blog:   http://toddwarfel.com
> ----------------------------------
> In theory, theory and practice are the same.
> In practice, they are not.
>
>
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