What Eye Tracking Shows About Reading Online

What Eye Tracking Shows About Reading Online

When researchers moved from newspapers to websites, they expected readers to behave the same way. They didn’t. Headlines before photos. Poynter’s EyeTrack studies of online reading, beginning around 2000, found that many web readers were drawn first to...
The F-Pattern: Make Your First Lines Count

The F-Pattern: Make Your First Lines Count

In 2006, the Nielsen Norman Group recorded the eye movements of 232 people as they looked at thousands of web pages. When the researchers combined the results into heat maps, a clear shape appeared. If you squint at those maps, you can almost make out the letter F....
Homepage value proposition

Homepage value proposition

The Trouble with “Pretty Photo” Homepages Many website themes today lean toward full-screen, minimal design. You land on a large, beautiful photo with a few words of text and a button, designed to make you click. But how strong does that combination have...
The Ideal Size of Everything Online

The Ideal Size of Everything Online

The Ideal Size of Everything Online So far in this series we’ve talked a lot about layout, eye tracking, and how people read. Now let’s turn to design itself, starting with the size of things. Web design is all about communication. The designer’s...