More Thoughts on Web Design
Reading the most recent issue of Association Publishing magazine, I came across a Poynter Institute study that offers many suggestions for home page design. The study, dubbed Eyetrack III, involved observing 46 people for one hour as their eyes followed mock news websites and real multimedia content.
Among the key findings:
-Most often, people's eyes fixated first on the upper left of the page, hovering in that area befor emoving left to right.
- A higher percentage of survey participants looked at the navigation bar when it appeared at the top of the site (under a logo) rather than down the left side.
- People typically scanned down a list of headlines, spending less than a second on each one.
- Headlines that are underlined or larger than the accompanying blurb discouraged people from reading the blurb's text.
- Survey participants looked more at shorter paragraphs (one or two sentences) compared to longer ones.
- Text ads caught the attention of readers for 7 seconds, on average; display ads averaged 1.6 seconds.
- The bigger the ad, or the closer it was to popular editorial content, the more likely it was to be seen.
- Most people did not look first at images. When they did turn to images, larger ones held their attention better. About 10 percent of survey participants bothered to look at a photo sized like a postage stamp.
Of course, I knew our old buddy Jakob Nielsen was bound to have some thoughts on the study. According to Neilsen:
"Having users spend more time on a task is not an indication of a better design, it's an indication of a worse design. Since people are used to finding the navigation on the left or the top, that's where it should stay. Instead of forcing users to spend more time on deconstructing your page layout and navigation features, it's better to have them spend the time on engaging with your content."
Among the key findings:
-Most often, people's eyes fixated first on the upper left of the page, hovering in that area befor emoving left to right.
- A higher percentage of survey participants looked at the navigation bar when it appeared at the top of the site (under a logo) rather than down the left side.
- People typically scanned down a list of headlines, spending less than a second on each one.
- Headlines that are underlined or larger than the accompanying blurb discouraged people from reading the blurb's text.
- Survey participants looked more at shorter paragraphs (one or two sentences) compared to longer ones.
- Text ads caught the attention of readers for 7 seconds, on average; display ads averaged 1.6 seconds.
- The bigger the ad, or the closer it was to popular editorial content, the more likely it was to be seen.
- Most people did not look first at images. When they did turn to images, larger ones held their attention better. About 10 percent of survey participants bothered to look at a photo sized like a postage stamp.
Of course, I knew our old buddy Jakob Nielsen was bound to have some thoughts on the study. According to Neilsen:
"Having users spend more time on a task is not an indication of a better design, it's an indication of a worse design. Since people are used to finding the navigation on the left or the top, that's where it should stay. Instead of forcing users to spend more time on deconstructing your page layout and navigation features, it's better to have them spend the time on engaging with your content."
1 Comments:
These facts are interesting. Some I would have anticipated, but others are a surprise to me. For example, I would have thought that headlines that are slightly larger than the accompanying text would grasp the reader’s attention.
Nielsen made a good point that the objective is not to have user spend time performing tasks, but rather engage content.
I have to admit that with all of the data out there about usability, creating a site that allows the user to engage content is tough work. Personally, I get frustrated with trying to incorporate the results of too many studies that have something to report on too many things. I’d rather just roll the dice and use my intuition. Pretty risky, I guess....
By SEPARight, at 5:07 PM
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