Information scent is the cue that tells a visitor whether a link, button or label will lead to what they want. The idea comes from information foraging theory, which says people hunt for information the way animals hunt for food: they follow the strongest scent and leave when it fades.
On a website, strong scent means clear labels and pages that keep the promise of the click before them.
Where the term comes from
Peter Pirolli and Stuart Card set out information foraging theory in a 1999 paper, "Information foraging," in Psychological Review.
They modeled information seeking as a trade-off between the value a person expects to get and the effort it costs to get it.
Information scent is the part of the model that covers how people judge that value from small cues before they commit.
Nielsen Norman Group defines it as the user's imperfect estimate of what a source will deliver, judged from a representation of it, such as a link label.
Scent is relative: a link called "Food" smells strong if you want cheese and weak if you want face cleanser.
How information scent shows up in CRO and A/B testing
Most scent problems look like ordinary conversion problems.
Visitors bounce from a landing page whose headline doesn't match the ad.
They open the menu, can't find a category that sounds right, and leave.
Or they reach a product page, find it's wrong, and have no easy way back.
Common places to look:
- Navigation labels. Category names should use the words shoppers use, not internal names. See our navigation menu tests.
- Icons without words. A bare icon gives weaker scent than an icon with a label.
- Ad-to-page match. The landing page headline should repeat the promise of the ad or email that sent the visitor.
- Dead ends. Pages with no clear next step make the trail go cold.
Weak scent adds friction: each wrong click costs the visitor effort, and the theory predicts they give up when the expected payoff no longer covers that cost.
Examples from the database
Several navigation tests in our database are, in effect, scent tests.
They change what a cue says rather than how it looks.
- Labels on icons. Blend Commerce added short text labels beside the Menu, Search, Account and Cart icons in Goat Milk Stuff's mobile header. In a two-week mobile test, conversion rate rose 10.37% and revenue per visitor rose 2.95%.
- Labels in the customer's language. For Stone Creek Coffee, Blend Commerce grouped coffees in the menu by flavor profile (Bright, Balanced, Bold) instead of standard categories. That variant produced +11% revenue per visitor, +2% conversion rate and +9% average order value. A second variant that added explanatory copy hurt purchasing, so more words don't always mean more scent.
- A way back to the trail. A "Back to Results" link on Stone Creek Coffee product pages lifted mobile revenue per visitor 5%, but desktop conversion fell 5%, so it shipped on mobile only.
Not every scent-style change wins. When Blend Commerce added product images beside Oaktree Memorials' mobile menu categories, overall conversion rate fell 2% and revenue per visitor fell 4%.
Treat information scent as a way to find hypotheses, then test them.
Blend CommerceBlend CommerceBlend CommerceBlend CommerceHow to check your own scent
- Pick a top task, such as "find a gift under $50," and click through the site as a new visitor would.
- At each step, ask whether the label you chose made the next page predictable.
- Look at analytics for pogo-sticking: visitors who open a category or product and quickly go back.
- Compare ad and email copy with the headline of the page they link to.
- Rewrite the weakest labels in your customers' words and A/B test them.
Related terms
Information scent sits close to friction, message match and navigation design.
Browse the full CRO glossary for related definitions, or search all A/B test results for more navigation and labeling tests.