There’s a Seducible Moment

Education has a concept called "the teachable moment," the point when a learner is ready to learn, willing to change, and can act. For web sites, the parallel is something we call "the seducible moment." This is the point at which designers can entice users off the path to their original goal with the lure of something else.

The seducible moment can happen only when users have completed at least part of their original quest. It’s difficult to lure users away until they’ve reached this (self-defined) point; before that, they will simply ignore distractions. We’ve seen this frequently in our web-site usability testing.

Given this finding, the concept of the seducible moment argues against placing web ads in their traditional place at the top of a page. Users seem more willing to be seduced if an ad appears after they’ve found the information they’re most interested in.

Interesting note on placement of adds and seducible moments