You Won’t Finish This Article

[Sakura]

Why people online don't read to the end.

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Schwartz's data shows that readers can't stay focused. The more I type, the more of you tune out. And it's not just me. It's everywhere online. When people land on a story, they very rarely make it all the way down the page. A lot of people don't even make it halfway. Even more dispiriting is the relationship between scrolling and sharing. Schwartz's data suggest that lots of people are tweeting out links to articles they haven't fully read. If you see someone recommending a story online, you shouldn't assume that he has read the thing he's sharing.

 

[Ochalla]

Uh... Why is that 120%. Am I missing something?

 

[Sakura]

In the graph, each bar represents the share of readers who got to a particular depth in the story. There's a spike at 0 percent—i.e., the very top pixel on the page—because 5 percent of readers never scrolled deeper than that spot. (A few notes: This graph only includes people who spent any time engaging with the page at all—users who "bounced" from the page immediately after landing on it are not represented. The X axis goes beyond 100 percent to include stuff, like the comments section, that falls below the 2,000-pixel mark. Finally, the spike near the end is an anomaly caused by pages containing photos and videos—on those pages, people scroll through the whole page.)

 

[Zen]

I'm actually one of those people who won't always read to the end of the article. Why? Because most of the stuff that I want to know is in the first few paragraphs. I've found that towards the end of the article it's mostly background information, and sometimes it's stuff I don't really want to know or I tune out. I tend to lose attention on the subjects that I don't really care for, like business or finance. I am always interested to know how companies are doing, but when the article goes into detail as the how and why I get all Blargh.... But if it's stuff I'm interested in or is seriously important yeah I'll read to the end of the article.