The key to a productive website isn't stability, it's crop rotation.

There once was a peasant farmer who had limited land resources. On his small parcel of land he had to provide for his family and insure short-term, mid-term and long-term harvests. His short- and mid-term goals were to feed his family, sell to the local market and sell at the harvest fair. His long-term goals were to buy neighboring farms offering the same produce as he, to consolidate them and then diversify what the farms offered. By doing all this, he hoped someday to work with and own farms far away from his, and...

Lessons from the Hungry Peasant

You get the idea. The peasant farmer is no different than anyone else in business. There are three immediately interesting things about the peasant farmer;

1. He knows his resources will always be limited in one form or another. The Hungry Peasant will grow happy and feel fulfilled but never complacent in his success.
2.  He knows a lot about the land he owns, what'll grow on it and when, and he's willing to learn everything he can about his neighbor's land and harvests before he even talks to his neighbor about it.
3. The Hungry Peasant knows how to produce what he needs from the land he has available.

WebFarming

Web designers also must learn to work with limited land resources. When site design first began, designers had 600x480 pixels of land on which to lay their crops. Technology increased the parcels to 800x600, and now 1024x768 is a fairly standard field size. The Hungry Peasant knows that he has to produce something you want on a 1024x768 field. Both he and you are webfarming -- you're planting things in specific places in order to get the kind of yield you want.

The Lay of the Land

Many studies have been done which show how people visually scan for information. One of the best can be found in the April 22, 2005 issue of Science. This article and the information behind it cover visual search and the reasons it occurs the way it does. In short, people scan in a clockwise fashion with the eyes starting at "10 o'clock" and then going through two, five, six, eight, nine and back to 10. This scanning is a quick pass to find visual cues. Literally, people have an "idea" of what they're looking for and are doing pattern matching to find it (and what this means for search landing pages will be in a future column).

The Hungry Peasant knows that the highest visual yield will be at "10 o'clock" because the eye lands there twice before the mind catches on and says, "Hey, that looks interesting, let's look at that." The Hungry Peasant also knows that what he puts at 10 o'clock has got to be stimulating enough to get you to slow down but not so stimulating as to make you stop. He wants you to walk through his field and get the lay of the land, to get an idea of what else he's offering, not get caught up in one thing and stop navigating the site.

Plant Your Crops Where Visitors Can Find Them

Now here's the other thing the Hungry Peasant knows; what he plants at 10 o'clock has lots to do with who's coming to his field. Is your site visited by lots of people once, but few people again and again? Then your 10 o'clock position has got to have something which will call them back. Is your site visited by lots of people again and again? Then your 10 o'clock position has got to have something new each time they come. Much like the Hungry Peasant's farm stand, you need to have different things in your bins at different times in order to provide a reason for your customers to return again and again. "Different things in different bins" means you change the position of, but don't remove, what you offer every once in a while. If folks know you have the best tomatoes in the area and can't find them on the second or third visit, they'll ask (and you'll be happy to show them where you put them).

If this week you're offering tomatoes in your 10 o'clock position and people are returning to your site again and again for those tomatoes, it's time to move the tomatoes to positions two, five or six and put string beans at 10 o'clock. Don't remove the tomatoes or even put them on a different page. Keep them on the initial page, just move them slightly. Repeat visitors will already be familiar with them and be able to find them easily. People visiting your site because they heard about your great tomatoes will spend a little more time searching for them and -- provided the tomatoes are in the visual scan pattern -- find them and become repeat visitors themselves.

And visitors who know you have the best tomatoes, now finding them in positions 2, 5 or 6, will be naturally curious about those stringbeans you've place at 10 o'clock on the screen and be inclined to order them, too.

The key to a productive website isn't stability, nor is it radical re-designs every few months; it's crop rotation.

Where You Plant Determines What You'll Yield

Keeping the same material in the same place all the time has its advantages. People will always be able to find it. That's a very good thing. People will be able to direct others to it. That's another very good thing.

Also a good thing is simply varying where on a given page people will find what they're looking for. Consistency of page is different than consistency of placement on the page. People will give others a pointer to a page on your site and say, "You've got to try The Hungry Peasant's tomatoes." So long as tomatoes are on that page, new visitors are happy. Move tomatoes off that page and both new and old visitors aren't happy. Place something with obvious appeal at 10 o'clock and let it grow until its numbers become static. Now rotate your crops. Take what's been working for you at 10 and move it to two. Put something else at 10 and make sure it's also something with obvious appeal. Are those numbers starting to sag? Move it to two, the tomatoes go to five and put something else at 10.

Crop Rotation. Where you plant determines what you'll yield. Keep what's selling somewhere in that visual search pattern and visitors will be happy and keep returning. Move things around in that same visual search pattern and you'll encourage them to look at what else you're offering.

Joseph Carrabis has been everything from butcher to truckdriver to Senior Knowledge Architect to Chief Research Scientist. His 22 books and 225 articles have ranged among cultural anthro-pology, mathematics, information mechanics, language acquisition, neurolinguistics, psychody-namics and psychosocial modeling - and other eclectic topics. His knowledge and data designs have been used by Caltech, Citibank, DOD, IBM, NASA, Owens-Corning and Smith-Barney among others. Carrabis is CRO and Founder of NextStage Evolution and NextStage Analytics, and founder of KnowledgeNH and NH Business Develop-ment Network. He's inventor and developer of Evolution Technology and can be reached at jcarrabis@nextstagevolution.com.