Intext Pivoting: Marking points of interest while reading an article

We've learnt from our research that user attention while reading an article is substantially greater than anything in the sidebar, footer, or in the banner. In this context, even though attention is the highest, user interest to click and wander is lowest. However, the experience while reading the article completely determines what kind of content they'd love to explore into, after they have read your article. How can a content recommendation service balance out attention and non-intrusion?

Here are some numbers: On sites that had our Keyhole widget (which automatically figures topics that have good coverage on a site, and shows related content on hover), we found almost 30 - 50% of pageviews result in hovers over intext links. About 5% of these hovers resulted in users wanting to scroll more nuggets. However, very few users want to click and go away to other articles - while they are reading one.

The KeyHole widget in action. Notice how nuggets about Facebook from other articles are shown on hover.

Move over to our footer widget - FishEye, we notice that only about 20-30% of users ever get to see this widget. Even amongst those, at best 5% of users interact with the widget. About 70% of these interactions are click throughs to articles.

The FishEye widget. Allows users to explore article recommendations, most suited to the context of the page.

We noticed that interaction and curiosity is highest while reading the article. Click actions are highest after reading the article. So we decided to merge the two - take inputs from users while they read the articles, and allow them to explore and click after they are done with the article.

We call this Intext Pivoting - letting users mark their points of interest while reading an article, but explore, pivot and read them after they are done. Intext Pivoting does not abrupt the user's normal reading behavior, ensures he has fantastic recommendations waiting for him when needed, and increases time spent on both the context and the target pages!

Intext pivoting: A small popup asks if you want to dive into the selected text later

Intext pivots form the central view while looking at related recommendations.

When users finish reading the article, and get to our recommendations widget, we've remembered all his points of interest. The widget interactively allows users to drill down into each of them, explore article recommendations, and the concepts hidden in those articles.

Dhiti Dive is exploratory search technology for publishers, that allows readers discover and pivot around their interests.