I noticed this story on Digg that describes how the majority of visitors read your content. How they scan your content so to speak. Surprisingly the F shape is consistent in the experiments that has been held with eyetracking movements. Very interesting to get an idea on how to place your content on your pages. At what point does your content have te most attention from your visitors? Also Adsense placement is something that comes to mind. Good to know information!
I wouldn't call it so much an "F" pattern as I would a triangle. The reason why some of the "scanning" is concentrated as shown is because that particular chunk of text is bolded or enlarged. People will read content more entirely in the beginning and then transition into scanning as they go down the page. I'm sure if all text were exactly the same it would resemble more a triangle than an F.
This is very interesting. If you check with all the big boys websites they design for this pattern eg google.com etc
cool info edz! not just cool info but it may also help web designer/programmers construct well their websites! i've also read an article similar to this but it's topic more of the optimization of the website... im not sure if i could find it here in dp.
It's interesting. They say that the grey areas do not attract any 'fixation', and all of the examples show the bottom of the page as grey, so does this suggest that nobody bothers to read to the end of a page? T
thats pretty interesting. I think putting important content in those zones is more important than just putting content strictly in those zones.
Interesting... I wonder though if a site that draws the eyes attention specifically to other spots, different from the F pattern, would cause a disruption in the readers 'flow' or a disruption in their usage. Would not following the F pattern on a website to design content that is circular or even right centered cause a user to be uncomfortable?
Yeah, quite an interesting article. Also, I am subscribed to Jakob Nielsen's newsletter, and so I've read it some time ago; IIRC a week so so ... However, when I mentioned it in e-mail to my various friends (and some of them are pretty geeky), an ex class-mate of mine, who is btw. also a member of this forum (his nick is "ruph"), told me that this have changed lately; or through years, not sure or cannot remember what he meant though. Anyway, the change is that the visitors now first point their focus on the middle of the page, and later to the outer sections. regards, tayiper
This looks like good info. I am not sure if I am ready to quite that advanced though. I feel overwhelmed already. For months I have been struggling with my darn web design. When I don't feel so overwhelmed I may consider changing my site...again.
If anyone is maybe interested, please check out the second and third paragraph on my home-site's "website.html" page; it's a sub-page if the "about.html" page (see the link in my "Public Profile") tayiper
Most webpages conform to an expected pattern, which tends to lead the eye in this F-shape. I'm not sure that it applies to sites with unusual layouts, or that altering the positioning of content and advertising would work well in the long term. People read in that way because they want to read the content quickly. So if you change it to get better exposure for your adverts, it might work well for a while. But soon enough your visitors will get wise and concentrate only on the content, no matter how much you mix it up.