Monday, July 27, 2009

Eye tracking study reveals website tactics.

Eye tracking studies tend to be very informative and reveal valuable information about how people read and interact with websites. Eyetrack III recently published their eye tracking results for news sites. Some of the findings were quite the on lines of what we have commonly believed, however there are some interesting findings too.

Have listed 12 of the findings I thought were most interesting.

1.Headlines draw eyes before pictures.

2. People scan the first couple words of a headline.

3. People scan the left side of a list of headlines.

4. Your headline must grab attention in less than 1 second.

5. Smaller type promotes closer reading.

6. Navigation at the top of the page works best.

7. Short paragraphs encourage reading.

8. Introductory paragraphs enjoy high readership.

9. Ad placement in the top and left positions works best.

10. People notice ads placed close to popular content.

11. People read text ads more than graphic ads.

12. Multimedia works better than text for unfamiliar or conceptual information.

Read the full report here.

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