subject: Can It Really SEE Your Visitors Thought Paterns? [print this page] This you DO NOT want to miss: The newest report out on "seeing" what people look at when they browse through your site and how they react to certain layouts, headlines, images, and text formats.
Do you really want to know what people see when they visit your site? You think you're ready for the harsh reality?
The project managers of the EYETRACK III team, Steve Outing and Laura Ruel seem to have done quite a bit of work and I want to thank them for their findings.
So how do we utilize this new found information ? Knowledge is only power, unless it is applied.
Applying Knowledge: Homepage Layout
"The eyes most often fixated first in the upper left of the page, then hovered in that area before going left to right. Only after perusing the top portion of the page for some time did their eyes explore further down the page."
It is mentioned all throughout those articles that the people they tested and had the EyeTracker III track their movements, and they repeatedly looked towards the upper left hand corner first. The logical reason for that would be because many people in the world read left-to-right. Only certain people can read right-to-left.
That would be another explanation why they even tested sites that used their menu on the right and why most of the people tested, seemed to be drawn to the menus on the right.
Pay Attention As To What You Add On The Top Left Hand Corner!
Msn does this so perfectly, here's what you can find at the top of MSN, MSN Home, My MSN, Hotmail, Web Search, Shopping, Money, People & Chat .
The study shows that with having important links at the top, people will gravitate to those links first. First impressions are huge, even more than most of us consider sometimes.
Things you can add at the top to maximize the space:
If you have information or news that you want read right away, try to implement and position that information near the top. The study shows that by adding a small "caption" of the article, people will generally read the caption more than if there were only a headline to the article.
On the other hand, it doesn't mean that people will read the entire article more but ... You may attract readers to that article that may have just brushed the headline off.
