Content Surfers and Content Divers

There are con­tent surfers and con­tent divers.

This dis­tinc­tion is essen­tial because your web­site will attract many con­tent surfers but few con­tent divers.

It’s easy to get caught up and cater mainly to the con­tent surfers. However, it’s the con­tent divers that will provide value.

Here we go:

Content Surfers and Content Divers

If a user has shown interest in your sur­face-level con­tent and wants to explore and learn more, your brand must have some­thing to offer at those deep­er levels.

When users are sat­is­fied, they decide when not to go any deep­er. Your com­mit­ment to this strategy is to ensure that users nev­er leave because the option to go deep­er doesn’t exist.

As a rule of thumb:

A user­’s web­site jour­ney should nev­er end due to the brand’s fail­ure to provide rel­ev­ant information.

Since all rel­ev­ant inform­a­tion can­’t be eas­ily presen­ted sim­ul­tan­eously, organ­isa­tions must provide online inform­a­tion sev­er­al lay­ers deep. They must provide deep content.

Why is web­site depth so important?

Content surfers (mov­ing hori­zont­ally) look around, turn­ing over stones here and there. Content divers (mov­ing ver­tic­ally), on the oth­er hand, immerse them­selves — which is extremely valu­able from a brand’s perspective.

The minor­ity who click your content’s call to action (con­tent diver = mov­ing ver­tic­ally) is expo­nen­tially more valu­able than the major­ity who scan and move along (con­tent surfer = mov­ing horizontally).

Content divers have a more nar­row and focused intent. According to most web­site met­rics, they don’t mind scrolling ver­tic­ally and click­ing — as long as the con­tent becomes increas­ingly more rel­ev­ant to their needs.

Placing your brand’s most valu­able and in-depth con­tent at the “bot­tom” might seem counter-intuitive:

Content divers will quickly aban­don ship if they notice that your con­tent is get­ting worse and worse the deep­er they go.

Learn more: Content Surfers and Content Divers

Deep Content

Deep con­tent is centred around provid­ing increas­ingly high­er qual­ity to engaged users.

In the example below, five lay­ers of ever­green con­tent are stacked:

The basic struc­ture is derived from vari­ous levels of con­tent qual­ity. This doesn’t mean that your brand gets a free pass for pub­lish­ing low-qual­ity art­icles; it means that your art­icles must meet the require­ments of the social object cloud. 

From there, the con­tent qual­ity must increase as users dive deep­er into your con­tent package.

Example of a deep con­tent structure:

Ideally, the user­’s engage­ment should determ­ine when the inform­a­tion need has been ful­filled, not the lim­it­a­tions of the web­site’s avail­able content.

As for the import­ance of struc­ture and depth, the logic is the same as that of ice­berg pub­lish­ing and con­tent themes.

Learn more: The Deep Content PR Strategy

THANKS FOR READING.
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Iceberg Publishing

• Iceberg Publishing
• What is a Landing Page?
• Types of Landing Pages
• The Online Base Camp

Conversion Design

• The Classic Home Page Debate
• Beware of Conversion Cannibalism
• Derek Halpern’s Perfect Blog Post

Website Psychology

• The Inbound Shift PR Strategy
• Content Surfers and Content Divers
• The Leaky Funnel Problem

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