Company email list called Googlers. Sometimes it is about Tivo series 3. Sometimes it is about changes in snacks in the breakroom. A year or so ago the googler list was filled with comments on design of the Google home page. Mayer’s boss came to her and said this is ridiculous fix it and just find what works. So she figured out tests. The results of her tests were “mortifying.” The users thought they wanted 30 results on a page. They tried it and found that people found what they wanted 20% less of the time. Paradox of choice, by giving users more information they were driven away. You have to look at what people really want/need not just what they say they need. The big difference was time. The 10 results took .4 seconds. The 30 results took .9 seconds. The difference was why users were not happy with the 30 results. They wanted more results but they wanted it in the same amount of time.
Users respond to speed. Google uses AJAX because of speed. Mayer opposed the idea of using Javascript for gmail. Paul – some employee there – said Javascript is buggy etc, but it is fast on the client. Google maps then used it as well and it is fast. Users respond to fast. Google maps was around 100k. They reduced it to 80k. Google maps traffic went up 25% over three weeks.
Faster Feedback reduces the amount of time to learn. Users respond to that. This is what happened with digital photography. This is what happens with Google adwords. People post ads and then see results. Google video originally made you wait 24-48 hours. That sucked. Now users can immediately see their video.
Browsers are going to start implementing richer support for more advanced client applications.