Small Business Internet Marketing Blog

Browsing is perhaps two parts aimed search, plus three parts waiting to be blindly surprised. Discovery on the other hand, I would argue, is four parts aimless search and one part purposeful exploration. Seem like a concoction of misrepresented and confused concepts? Sure, I planned it that way - to get you to think about what users are doing out there in their flat-paneled universe.

While browsing is far more common among in search, it leads to far less satisfaction. Browsers often get up from their computer feeling largely empty, having accomplished little if anything. They are largely without meaningful purpose. They are actively being passive. Like passer byers at a county fair, they are hollowly walking past adventurous opportunities utterly dominated by their practical nature. They pretend to themselves and their audience that if the right attraction comes along they will bite on it. The reality however, is that one side of their brain is starving for fun, stimulation of entertainment and the buying of goods. The problem is that marketing to this bunch of browsing consumer yahoos is waiting for something that the other side of their brain will never allow.

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