We go to the internet because we seek something: love . . .adventure . . . education . . . opportunity . . . the hot new gadget . . . the must-have holiday toy . . . an escape from our daily life.

But when we get there, we find the internet is a frustrating place — because when it comes to choices, the internet has outdone itself. Fueled by the ever-accelerating rate of new data and new content, everyone out there can offer you a product or service that you should try. We are awash in options and left to wonder whether we might find something better with just one more click. The hunt for one item turns into a quest for answers amid far too many possibilities. Choice becomes distracting rather than focusing. Which is the best item for us? And how can we know?

We go to the internet for solutions, and instead we get a digital to-do list that forces us to try to optimally select each item on the list. It becomes a routine exercise in frustration. As experts encourage us to spend less time in front of our screens, we are only spending more. We don’t know who to blame for our predicament. We’re wondering why the internet isn’t making us happier.

This is the challenge presented to digital teams. And to get rid of what frustrates us and create the winning experiences we want, the teams need a new way of looking at the problem — one that puts the seeker in the center.

We can define seeker as a customer or consumer looking to achieve a higher-order outcome — which then gets decomposed into a series of products or services that they might be looking for. They then become a customer or prospect looking for those products and services.

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Source: Book Excerpt: ‘The Digital Seeker’ | Practical Ecommerce