How do you convert browsers into buyers? By harmonizing your thought leadership with online decision-making behaviour.
This needs to happen.
Insights into content marketing challenges uncover an assortment of problems we could sum up as not understanding what the audience needs to hear and when. (Ineffective strategies weren't data-driven, tied to customer journeys, or based on clear goals - among other issues.)
It's an almost universal problem, found even in enterprise content operations.
What's also universal? Certain behavioural patterns associated with significant online action-taking and decision-making.
Understanding Web-Driven Decision-Making
In an earlier post, we covered Edelman-LinkedIn's 2025 Thought Leadership Impact Report. This year focused on hidden B2B buyers - finance directors, compliance leads, ops managers, and so on. These are people who play a major role in purchasing decisions, but don't personally interact with potential vendors.
In lieu of that, invisible stakeholders actively engage with corporate thought leadership - using it to discover, evaluate, and compare.
This online decision-making behaviour isn't unique to invisible stakeholders, nor is it a new phenomenon. Similar patterns have been detected as early as 1998.
In a pioneering web usability study, Xerox Parc researchers Julie Morrison, Peter Pirolli, and Stuart Card conducted a critical incident analysis to see which web activities significantly impacted actions and decisions. N.B., this study focused on important web use - not all or even average use, and focused on incidents that were recent, complete, and with known consequences.
Here's what they found:
- 96% of critical incidents were goal-triggered, with users intending to either find specific information (25%) or collect multiple pieces of information while being open to any answer (71%).
- Their purposes were mainly to find (25%), understand (24%), or compare information (51%).
This research dates back to 1998. But like we said, it gave fundamental insight into web usability, heuristics, activity taxonomic classifications, etc.
Even so, let's take a look at something more recent.
The Nielsen Norman Group conducted a replication study in 2019, finding that users engaged in more understanding-related activities than comparison and choosing activities.
Here's their breakdown of how people were using the web:
- 40% were looking to understand,
- 36% were comparing or choosing,
- 24% were finding or acquiring info.
So users' main activities preceding a significant action or decision shifted around between 1998 and 2019. However, people are still engaging in the same core behaviours.
Characteristics of Online Decision Making
Let's take a holistic look at Xerox Parc's original 1998 study - since it defined web activity taxonomic classifications that are still relevant - and NN/g's 2019 update.
Those original taxonomies were purpose, method, and content. NN/g then added social interaction and device.
The purpose taxonomy defines the primary reason for a user's search. It found three.
- Find or Acquiring: using the internet to get specific info, originally classified as:
- a. download information
- b. get a fact
- c. get a document
- d. find out about a product.
- Compare or Choose: evaluating multiple products or pieces of information in order to help make a decision.
- Understand: using the internet to help understand a topic; generally includes locating facts or documents
The method taxonomy categorized how people found the information and what their goal was. It found four.
- Explore: general information searching that wasn't triggered by a specific goal.
- Monitor: Repeated visits to specific websites to update information. The search is not triggered by a particular goal; it is a routine behaviour.
- Find: Searching for a particular fact/document/piece of information. Search is triggered by a goal.
- Collect: Searching for multiple pieces of information.
The content taxonomy refers to the information domain. This will largely reflect your business area, but NN/g found interesting correlations between content type and other taxonomies.
- Business & Job Search (or NN/g's Work)
- Education
- Finance
- Medical
- Miscellaneous
- News
- People
- Product Info & Purchase
- Travel
- Entertainment (NN/g)
- Hobbies & Interests (NN/g)
- Home & Families (NN/g)
- Pets (NN/g)
The social interaction taxonomy determined if users interacted with anyone during that specific incident. NNM found six.
- Collaborate: working with others during information seeking or decision making; everyone has a say in the final decision. E.g., looking for a place to eat.
- Inquire: asking someone for more information; this person doesn't have a say in the final decision. E.g., contacting a company with a question.
- Informed: Being informed by others via online means. E.g., a social media discussion.
- Share: Informing others. E.g., sending a link.
- Execute: Carrying out an action through social interaction. E.g., calling to purchase.
- No interaction: No social interaction mentioned at all by the respondents.
The device taxonomy determined which device people were using. NNM defined four.
- Desktops or laptops
- Smartphones
- Tablets
- Multiple devices
The Core Findings
People are active - not passive. In 1998, passively exploring or monitoring the web occurred before only 4% of critical incidents. In 2019, that number jumped 14%, likely due to the increase in browsing times, prevalence of mobile devices, and access to notifications such as texts, emails, and push notifications. 4 to 14% might be a big jump, but the passive share is still low in comparison to those actively searching for information.
Their main goal is to understand - followed by comparing and choosing their options.
In 1998, people used the web to compare and choose much more than to understand. Since then, the internet has evolved into a trusted, and our main source of information. We use it to understand, then move directly into evaluation.
Decision Making in 2025
This brings us back to Edelman-LinkedIn whose recent B2B content marketing findings correlate perfectly with these earlier usability studies.
People are still active users and engaged in discovering, consuming, and evaluating quality information throughout decision-making. One thing separating B2B buyers from general users is Edelman-LinkedIn's finding that 56% of target decision-makers and 51% of hidden decision-makers used content to evaluate their options. So don't skimp on the comparison docs.
Another thing to note is that hidden buyers, in particular, want accessible insights with quick takeaways rather than deep technical or academic educational material. Buyers might want to understand, but they want to be challenged, inspired, and discover how you - their potential solution provider - think. Technical education alone won't move them.
TK.