Why speed should be your first priority

A short one this week, but one that sets up what I'm going to be writing about over the next few weeks, and one that may offer you a new way to prioritize...

I've been thinking a lot recently about how to make decisions on competing priorities for search and discovery projects, and I'm leaning towards a simple heuristic: when in doubt, go with whatever will save users the most time.

Maybe this is because I'm getting older, and so I have less of it, but I'm starting to think that saving time for people is good for business but also probably a moral good. (It feels a bit too twee to say that without hedging, but if I'm being completely honest, it's true.)

We don't even need to point to data to know that this is good for business. E-commerce shops are going to sell more products if shoppers get to the right ones and through checkout faster. Streaming services will stream more video if viewers don't have to wait for buffering.

Take a look at many of the moves Google has made and you'll see how much they likewise believe that speed is good for their business. Google Fiber is a good example. Many believe that the ultimate goal of Fiber wasn't revenue, but to get the entrenched providers to shape up and offer faster Internet. A big part of their Chrome announcement was around performance. Google even offers their own DNS "as part of [their] ongoing effort to make the web faster."

So, give it a try. Shine a light on some of your search and discovery projects. Think about which save end users the most time. See if that aligns with what you've prioritized.

Over the next few weeks, we'll do the same here as well. We'll look at search features and see how they contribute to this goal. Subscribe below to follow: