Easy navigation of hierarchical/structured links just encourages visitors to turn sideways away from the content they are being funnelled towards.
The cattle farmers that currently run the web only want you clicking away once you’ve had a couple of opportunities to see ads, and it will be via some highly tuned clickbait “related links”.
But why wouldn’t they want you to spend more time on their site, you ask? Because people who are conducting a structured search for information will focus on finding that information, not on clicking the adverts. They are bad customers. What the farmers want is people who are only casually looking for information, who will be easily diverted to click on something else.
> But why wouldn’t they want you to spend more time on their site, you ask? (...)
Also: because if they can get you to spend only a few moments on their site, but do it every day, they're conditioning you into being a regular and loyal visitor. Intermittent rewards and all that. The person who spends more time and accomplishes all their goals will not come back until they actually need something from the site again.
Easy navigation of hierarchical/structured links just encourages visitors to turn sideways away from the content they are being funnelled towards.
The cattle farmers that currently run the web only want you clicking away once you’ve had a couple of opportunities to see ads, and it will be via some highly tuned clickbait “related links”.
But why wouldn’t they want you to spend more time on their site, you ask? Because people who are conducting a structured search for information will focus on finding that information, not on clicking the adverts. They are bad customers. What the farmers want is people who are only casually looking for information, who will be easily diverted to click on something else.