Information Behavior (+Wilson’s Model)
Here’s how you could put the information seeking & searching behaviors typical of the user groups to effective use...
One can’t condone the importance of the role the behavior, preferences & purchasing patterns of the users make in crafting products & building relevant marketing pitches that hit home. But diving in one level deeper & one’d realize how those patterns / preferences / behaviors are only relative to the quality of information the users are fed over those awareness drives / market campaigns conducted by the product orgs. or the alternate sources the users hinge on towards collating what they think is necessary & essential information to enable them towards making wiser choices leading to a better life.
« EARLIER «
A kid sees some other kid riding a colorful bike in the neighborhood & comes running to the parents demanding the same. The parents ask the kid to describe the bike only to be met by a sense of unceasing excitement that obviously doesn’t help them space it in their memories. The parents then venture out to visit a bike store nearby running through many models until the kid finally finds the one it is after and nods in total submission resulting in a sale.
But, that was 4 decades back. That doesn’t happen anymore as for most of the world today.
» TODAY »
A kid doesn’t demand stuff from parents anymore. When some get online & directly browse through the things they want & hit “ORDER NOW”, some still resort to all the searching, sorting, adding to kart & then take it to their parents / guardians / someone who can foot the bill to gain final approval.
Driven entirely by the internet & how most of the shopping is done online from the comfort of the couch, the way one seeks out the information deemed essential to facilitate that final decision of BUY / PASS has undergone a mammoth change. Yes, that’s induced a bit of a complication, a few additional steps into the user’s flow as opposed to how it was done in the past.
Here’s a comparison of the two:
So, given how users make choices today from a time they get to discovering the product through an online search right until such time that they decide to BUY & click on a relevant CTA they could be on a quest of gathering all the information so as to facilitate their choices, help build a rationale over that pursue / pass. Each and every step in that process could lead to a major / minor change in their behaviors about their choices. When sometimes the changes happen very consciously, other times it could all be very subtle happening subconsciously which is why tapping into the information seeking behaviors of the user groups / target audience could make total sense for product & marketing teams.
Information Behaviour (Seeking & Searching)
Just as narrated above there are multiple instances of users hitting the web which could qualify as information seeking & in due course also hit other sources seeking more information that could help establish the performance, stability, durability of the product ensuring they are getting a bang for the buck.
One may think on the lines of:
“Why do I even ought to pay any bit of attention to how people search for & seek out stuff on the internet, even if that were to pertain to my own product?”
Well. Post launch product teams get busy tapping into various channels to spread the word out, make people more aware about what’s on offer. Now, every product would have a sect of people onboard as the product gets launched, some may eagerly await a launch committing themselves in by joining a waitlist of some sort. Those are the EARLY ADOPTERS & may convert regardless. They may not require a huge amount of effort from your side. The ones who do, belong right in the CHASM (quoting “Crossing the Chasm” here). If you aren’t worried about tapping into each of those groups, understanding them, looking for innovative ways & doing whatever it takes towards converting them into an EARLY MAJORITY, nobody else will.
Definition:
“Information-seeking behaviour is the act of actively seeking information in order to answer specific queries”
&
“Information-searching behaviour (which usually follows suit) is how the searcher interacts with the system in question to get to a deeper state of understanding”
There were many theories proposed towards explaining the information behaviour although the first notable work was done by Thomas D. Wilson in 1981. Many more people over the years have significantly contributed to the study of information seeking also known as “sense making”.
An important breakthrough in this area would be the revised Wilson’s model of information behaviour published in 1996 to include a lot more factors so as to enable a better explanation of the information behaviour.
By now & as confirmed by the model here, it ought to be pretty evident that the context & the need to get to an informed state could involve so many steps that require one to gauge so many variables when some of them may as well be deeply psychological. But having said that, there’s no denying the fact that one ought to initiate the search, kicking it off by some sort of input which may translate into nouns, phrases, keywords etc.
Thinking from a pragmatic standpoint, the information search at the user’s end would often be triggered by something that:
happens to catch their fancy
could be novel / unheard of
could shock them / make it tough to believe
successfully invoking a penchant / a desire to learn more in all cases.
The trick isn’t about writing paragraphs describing everything that the org. is doing currently, but to keep it minimalistic & be able to evoke interest. Remember, if the content is leaving them with questions about the product / service / business vertical, that’s always good, as the penchant to look for a link somewhere, get online & explore more would obviously follow.
Hypothetically speaking, there is a good chance that one goes online to search for the name of a microbe / bacteria / virus to learn more about it if that name happens to be projected on any of your prints (marketing assets) occupying more than 50% of a page there. Going to the website to learn more about the org. / business vertical may not be a GOTO for many.
Let’s dive into a case study to understand this better.
CASE STUDY:
Consider a Not-For-Profit org. that’s into building awareness on Cancer…
The vision of the org. is to build cancer awareness amongst all age groups & they achieve that via camps, on-foot campaigns, awareness drives, elaborate & interactive sessions targeting demographically diverse groups of people. Understanding the importance of a social presence today, they take to building & floating content. Whilst doing so, supposing they come up with their 1st draft over their marketing which is on the lines of…
1st Draft: “People getting together to voice their support & spread awareness on cancer”
The understanding of the cause i.e., CANCER, is totally a given there. But the inclusion of “people getting together” “voice their support” could use some improvement. Some questions that may arise as one comes across this are:
Who are these people? Are they a qualified lot, like say: Doctors?
Is there any sort of monetary exchange in the process?
How does “voicing their support” work? What do they do exactly?
2nd Draft: “A community targeting cancer awareness”
Supposing, they plan to put an effort to deliberately cut it all short & come up with this version. Here the fact that it’s a community does come across pretty clearly. But then again it could lead to doubts like:
How does the community work towards building awareness?
Are these campaigns going to be done online?
Who is it meant for? Who are the participants here?
3rd Draft: “Not-For-Profit org. building in-person events targeting cancer awareness drawing participants across AGE-GROUPS”
Supposing it gets further refined to this, the 3rd draft. Let’s look at this & see if we get the answers to all possible questions that may arise:
There could be many who find this line over a floating advert on some casual browsing, but unless that clearly spells out how they could come along & contribute, it could end up being just another banner that garners the eyeballs sans any clicks / progress towards a sign-up / participation.
In summary:
People do get online to check what’s what today irrespective of the size of article / value of purchase. That information seeking & searching behavior can’t be condoned / changed / overturned / stopped. If anything, it ought to be factored in by employing the right language, diction, terms over crafting social-fronted material / campaigns so as to influence the decision to BUY / SIGN-UP in the best case / PROCEED to the next step in the funnel over the others.