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15 Must-Know Facts on How People View Websites
Filed under: Blogging, Content Copywriting, Dreamgrow, Facebook, Psychology, Science, Social Media, Surveys and stats, Top10, User experience
Do you know what is the first thing that your eye is drawn to on a website? And in what pattern do people scan your website? There have been many eyetracking tests on this subject and I’ll give you 15 most useful facts you should know.
The picture below shows 3 different websites and where people look on them. Red indicates the area, where people looked the most, yellow areas got a bit less eye-action, blue areas got the least views and the gray areas, well, people didn’t focus on them at all.
As you can see, the more people scroll down, the more they lose focus and start mainly scanning your website. So always try to place the most important information in the top part of your website.
Here are the 15 facts you should know on how people view websites.
- Text attracts more attention than pictures.
- People start viewing your website from the top left corner.
- Readers ignore banners. Surprise, suprise.
- Fancy fonts are ignored.
- People only scan the lower parts of your website.
- Short paragraphs work better than long ones.
- Ads, that are placed on the top or left part of your website, get the most views.
- Ads, that are placed inside or below an awesome piece of content, get more views.
- Big pictures attract more attention than small ones.
- Also headlines draw attention.
- Visitors spend more time looking at menus and buttons than other parts of your website.
- Lists are better at keeping your reader focused than large paragraphs.
- Some people even completely ignore large chunks of text.
- White space is good!
- Menu works best when placed on the top part of your website.
There you go. Some points from this list are pretty basic and elementary, but a good reminder never hurts. So the next time when you’re writing an awesome piece of content, or building your new website, keep these points in mind. You now have the knowledge – use it!
Sources:
BBC News | directcreative | GoogleBlog
Posted on: August 11, 2011
God sake i was totally wrong the right side was my favorite. Swapped to the left thanks.
I really liked the guys point on paragraphs and lists to keep the attention of visitors. good article
WOOOW !!
I have to go update my site with this information, although I can not believe that the text is better than the pictures … great post
we keep reading.
I agree with all the points, except text part. I think, websites like pinterest getting popular is because ppl like to see pictures. If text is written in bullets like your post here, then it delivers far better results. Thanks for sharing these great points though!
Data says that people look at text longer than at pictures. But I think it is wrong to deduce that text has more impact on your page. It is to be expected that text gets more attention because it takes longer to process a text than a picture. Same is probably true for large images vs small ones.
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Everything in this post is so true I was telling this to a business associate just the other day . I am glad to have come across this post to show my argument is valid thank you
I think over time people’s attention change from one section of the website to another. I remember a time when banner ads were the best, then people got used to it and developed banner blindness. Then came text ads which was so in until people adjusted to that as well.
The same is true for websites but I do agree that text attracts more than pictures unless the person visiting your site is looking for a picture. After all, people surf the web to read and to watch.
In the end, there’s no single formula. If you’re a blogger than chances are people will focus more on your text than your photos. If you’re a “photo-blogger” then things might be different.
Just my 2 cents.
- Mike
Really good post and something I must be aware of when designing my new website.
And probably I need to re-design my old ones a bit too
Very interesting tutorial.Thank you!
Some of them I knew, some I didn’t. But I’ve seen Google eye heat maps before and they also said the top left and immediate center is the most important.
What I have found is that you need to constantly test your design, and try and improve it. What looks good to you might not be the best option for your users.
Well, I think you have some pretty good facts here..I would have guessed that pictures & banners would be before text.
I have my sharing buttons on the left side & at the end of my post.
Thanks for this info, I will keep all in mind..
We used this on our website and it works great.
Great insight again as usual. Testing is key IMHO. Even if you expect certain results, its a good idea to confirm it with monitoring software.
A very interesting list! Thanks for the reminder, we often get so caught up in delivering good content that we forget that the layout of the site might mean it doesn’t get read! Interesting to know that text gets looked at more than pictures…
If you notice, all the example of heat maps had very few pictures in them, in fact only the center example seems to have a significant picture. In that one, it is the picture that draws the attention and not the text on the left side. According to the map, the text on the left is almost ignored. The link to the original authors site shows that his site is all text. I think that people have moved on and become more visual than textual. It would be interesting to see the study replicated with a better mix of text and graphics.
Great article. We’ve got recently an analysis of clicks on our website and I was really surprised how people sometimes click on completely random places, like in the middle of pictures for example.
A superb post, complete opposite to what I was always told!