Editor’s Corner
How Good is Your Goo?

A new measure of success on the Web these days is having a "sticky" site. By sticky, the new jargon is alluding to how long people stay at your site. In other words, how glued viewers become to the screen. And in the deeper analysis, how much goo do you put out there of such quality that people would get stuck on your sticky site?

Now television doesn't have to do that much to get people to sit still and watch the screen. A little sex, lots of violence, attractive stars, a good script, maybe. Creating a mix of that type takes a lot of production management and numerous resources. But people do sit and watch one screen with just the one program on it.

The web is different. Your viewers aren't quite as passive. You need buttons and links for people to click on, maybe some streaming video and audio (now we're getting close to TV here). If your advertisers are going to get value for their money they need to be on "sticky sites" where visitors' longer stays will give advertisers a better shot for their attention.

So if you thought building traffic to your site was the ultimate challenge, it's not. It's about goo and how you lay it on to hold your visitor there. A customer selects a book and your site suggests three more like it to buy, so the viewer takes another few minutes to check these titles out. A portal like Excite displays the text of a leading news story and lists other stories to read on the same topic. These are great techniques for extending a surfer's stay.

The ultimate goo, in my opinion, is a custom screensaver that dials directly up to your web site at scheduled intervals. People's time offline far outweighs their time online. If you can wheedle your way onto their desktop screens you've won, perhaps, the most valuable space they can give you.

Whatever way you look at it, it's a question of goo. How else can you make them stick with you??