Mozilla’s study of how people use the web recently released the results of the tab open/close study. Some interesting things here related to user experience and how people use the web. The study concludes that most people have 5 or less tabs open at a time. Which means that we probably are multitasking when we are online. Sourcing information and producing content will require a couple of tabs at least (and if you’re like me, probably upwards of 20). Another interesting finding from the data:
If the default tab is a different site from the closed tab, the user is around 77% likely to stay on the default tab for at least 5 seconds; but if the default tab is on the same site, this probability climbs to about 85%.
Which speaks to stickiness, a concept that web designers and marketers are well aware of – keeping people at your site is key. It would be interesting to see how this relates to e-learning sites alone – what people are leaving LMS’s for (mostly resources like Google I suspect)?