tedster - 10:02 pm on Jan 13, 2010 (gmt 0)

"Information Scent" is a phrase I first heard from Jakob Nielsen. Here's an idea of what it means: from a quick scan of a page, does it "smell" like the content the user is looking for might be nearby, a click or two away? That scent is mostly communicated through navigational links, whether in the main site template, auxiliary navigation or content area linked words.

When the old "3-click rule" was discredited in actual user testing, the discovery made was that people would keep clicking into a site, up to 15 times or more, IF the information scent was strong enough.

Here are some related articles:

Information Foraging: Why Google Makes People Leave Your Site Faster [useit.com]

Deceivingly Strong Information Scent Costs Sales [useit.com]

[edited by: tedster at 6:46 pm (utc) on Jan. 14, 2010]