Subscribe to RSS Feed
You may have viewed thousands if not millions of web pages. But have you ever thought about how you look at a web page? Probably not because you do it unconsciously.
Anyway I came across the results from an eye tracking study done on how web users looked at thousands of Web pages.
Ditital Inspiration - "An eye tracking study recorded how users looked at thousands of Web pages including Google and Slashdot. The study had looked at how people navigate websites, search and react to advertising."Knowing how users view a web page is very useful for web designers and bloggers. But I wonder whether this pattern is the same for languages such as Arabic which is written and read from right to left instead of left to right. Maybe in those cases users look at the web page like the letter F flipped the other side.
"And they had found out that a human eye scans a web page like letter F. These results are depicted in the picture on the left side. The areas where users looked the most are colored red; the yellow areas indicate fewer views, followed by the least-viewed blue areas. Gray areas didn't attract any fixations."
Update (13 June)
Eye Tracking Research on How Users Read Web Pages - 2
7 People had something to say about this article. Please read them and add your thoughts...
nice blog
This is freaking awesome! Totally the most useful thing I have seen all year. Nice find!
I doesn't really matter how nice your site is, how well it is ranked in the search engines or how much traffic it receives... ultimately, the design and placement of things that are important to you need to be in the hot spots. Very useful!
Many thanX for this post. :D
More info on how this study was done and some interesting commentary.
All Blog Spots,
Thanx :)
Garry conn,
I totally agree. The design is as important as the content.
cerno,
I must add that link to the post. Thank you very much for telling me.
Thank you for dropping by guys, Hope to see you again :)
interesting site and very interesting article. You can thank Garry Conn for me visiting via his article.
cheers from australia.
Not sure I agree. I tend to look where the text is. And I see that on your blog all your text is in the 'blue' zone - the contents list is in the 'red' zone, which I personally only look at infrequently after I have finished reading all the stuff in your 'blue' zone. Vic
Hi Vic!
Like you say the content is what we look at most, but the significance of this survey is the users web page reading (or scanning) pattern they have discovered. Also it tells us that placing advertisements inside a blog post content is more effective than in the sidebar. Your and my reading pattern corroborates this point.
Let us know what you think... Click Here to Post a Comment!!