Interconnectivity
Interconnectivity is what makes the
web different from other kinds of
design.
Users have come to expect to have all of the information that
they want at their fingertips; thus they will expect to be
able to link to relevant information on your page. This presents
several challenges
unique to the web, keeping users attention, guiding them logically
through the site, and making sure they know what they can link to.
Interconnectivity
A website doesn’t have to have all of the information that is relevant to the topic of the site. Google made 21.8 billion dollars of revenue in 2008, most of it from advertising. That is 21.8 billion dollars that businesses paid Google so that they could have links to their website in opportune places. The web is all about mobility of users; they can go through three sites and pages of information in mere minutes. This allows the designer great freedom, because there is no need to explain everything on your page when you can just link to another site that does.Therein lies the challenge of keeping the user on your page. While it is easy to send users away for a footnote explaining something, it is harder to make sure they return. This emphasizes how important it is to capture the viewer’s attention, and to do so quickly. You need to communicate to the reader that your site has the best information and links, and is always the best place to work from. People aren’t going to wait on the web; they have so many choices at their fingertips that they will just move on if they don’t like what they see. The page needs to reach out and grab the reader and pull them in or it won’t matter how good the site is.
Facebook is an excellent example of how the interconnectivity of the web can be used. Everything is a link; you can link to your friends, your friend’s pictures, games, notes, events, groups, etc. It is so connected that you can travel through a vast variety of information through many different people. Since Facebook launched social plugins in April 2010, 10,000 new websites integrate with Facebook every day. Every month 250 million people engage with Facebook on external websites. Facebook has built itself on connecting people to the web, and it is one of the most traveled websites in the world.