Locality Switch

I have got myself into this habit of visiting several websites by default when I first open up my browser for the day. These sites include Twitter, Whirlpool Forums, Facebook, Coding Horror, Signal vs Noise, Google News, and a few others. During the course of my browsing session, I find myself regularly visiting these sites. It would seem I am somewhat addicted?

Not that it’s much of a problem – after all, at each site I can discover something new and interesting.

But, what I really want to know is what makes these sites so addictive? These sites I regularly visit are very popular ones. Sure, some more than others, but each one would pull at least thousands of visitors per day.

There are three main things each of these sites have in common:

• Regular updates
• Human perspective / interaction
• Simple concepts

If you observe the most popular sites on the net, you will see these three traits are common throughout each of them (this isn’t a cold hard fact, just my personal observation). I believe that if you remove one of these traits, you will find the site is no longer as addictive.

Sometimes the thing which keeps dragging me back to a site is the perception of regular updates. See, if no one has posted anything visible to me on Facebook since I last visited, then Facebook will automatically make it seem as if something new has happened, by changing the Highlights section on the sidebar.

The simple concepts item on my bullet list is an interesting one. You will notice each of the sites I regularly visit have a simple concept at the heart of them. Let’s examine a few:

• Google News: get the latest news
• Facebook: connect with friends and family
• Whirlpool Forums: community discussion on Aussie Broadband

While each simple concept may be really really complex to actually implement in a coding sense, the user still gets a simple concept presented to them. While in many cases the simple concept has been expanded massivly, when you first arrive on the site, the simple concept takes center stage.

Finally, us humans love human participation, interaction and perspective. That’s why there are a couple of blogs I regularly visit – I want other people’s perspective on things. Life gets boring if you never get told what other people think. The comments section on a blog are also really important – it shows us what other people think on the same issue.

If you want to build a popular site, then make sure you can check off each of these three items. There’s a lot more to building a successful site, but these three features are at the core of addiction.