Holly Buchanan uses the homepage structures of two dating sites to show how Webmasters can cater to spontaneous or methodical visitors. She dubs spontaneous visitors as those that just want to jump in
and take action. "They can get answers to their questions later," Buchanan says. Methodical visitors, on the other hand, want their questions answered before they click, join or otherwise get further
engaged.
Match.com is geared toward the former, as there's just one image, one call to action, and even a special offer designed to help users jump right in. Plentyoffish.com is the
complete opposite. "New visitors see a list of four points (numbered, which the methodicals loved)" -- thus "answering questions that those methodicals want answered before they take even one action
on your site," Buchanan says.
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