Newness bias
By Kristoffer Bohmann, Bohmann Usability
Newness bias. A large number of web services are highly biased toward the newest content and put insufficient attention to other relevant content.
- Ecommerce sites promote the latest products and product-related news and often ignore older content.
- News sites and weblogs often forget to link back in time to related news stories.
- A large number of corporate sites only publish the latest corporate news while simply deleting older news stories.
The newness bias is in part beneficial as it help users focus on the latest developments. Yet it also removes the opportunity to get a (more) valid and complete historical perspective. For instance, journalists often use information about corporate events to provide context in their stories. And customers in need of product support will value product support pages for products no longer available.
My advice is to keep as much old content as possible by building up good archives. Keep the old press releases on corporate sites; existing and potential investors will find it useful. Keep the old product pages (remember to add the line No longer available if the product is no longer offered). Supplement lists of new stuff with other relevant list types (e.g., bestseller lists, most popular lists, and related stories/products).
Kristoffer Bohmann
