Findability and Exploration: the future of search by Stijn Debrouwere.
From the introduction:
The majority of people visiting a news website don’t care about the front page. They might have reached your site from Google while searching for a very specific topic. They might just be wandering around. Or they’re visiting your site because they’re interested in one specific event that you cover. This is big. It changes the way we should think about news websites.
We need ambient findability. We need smart ways of guiding people towards the content they’d like to see — with categorization and search playing complementary goals. And we need smart ways to keep readers on our site, especially if they’re just following a link from Google or Facebook, by prickling their sense of exploration.
Pete Bell recently opined that search is the enemy of information architecture. That’s too bad, because we’re really going to need great search if we’re to beat Wikipedia at its own game: providing readers with timely information about topics they care about.
First, we need to understand a bit more about search. What is search?
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A classic (2010) statement of the requirements for a “killer” app. I didn’t say “search” app because search might not be a major aspect of its success. At least if you measure success in terms of user satisfaction after using an app.
A satisfaction that comes from obtaining the content they want to see. How they got there isn’t important to them.