One of the best ways researches have at their disposal to test the effects of webpage design elements is the use of eye-tracking technology.  By wearing special glasses/goggles, computers are able to track the movement and length of fixation of a person's eyes as they look over a page.  We've talked a couple of times in the past about Google's use of eye-tracking.  But they are by no means the only folks out there doing this.

 

The Online Journalism Review has published some of the results of a major study designed to help news websites design better pages.  While the focus of the study seems to be news-related websites, the results are pertinent and extremely valuable to anyone building a website with textual content.

 

The test was set up as follows: 

A number of different tests were administered and participants in the study were usually asked to "read the news", "learn" something, or find a specific group of information within a website or article.  Some of the major findings include: 

• Bulleted information, subheadings, and "tighter" writing not only appeared to be more "satisfying" to readers, but also increased comprehension by 12%
• Users typically only read 2 - 3 words of a headline when scanning for content
• Images with little information are ignored;  images with models get ignored because they are assumed to be advertisements
• Content should be easily scannable and simple to navigate
• Images should be clear, directly related to the content, feature average looking people (not models), or areas of private anatomy (men tend to be drawn to the anatomy of other men, women, and even animals… according to this study)
• "Decorative" elements that add no value should be replaced with more valuable elements or simply turned into white space

A lot of us talk about these things when someone asks us about website design.  And we all hear about the studies that show these ideas to be true.  But the thing I love about this report is that it shows you exactly how people are responding to a page.  You can look at the eye-tracking heatmaps and see exactly where people looked, for how long, and what got ignored.

 

How could you do something similar without purchasing what I can only assume is expensive eye-tracking technology?

 

You could do some informal testing and ask people to simply relay in words what they're looking at.  You could time how long it takes someone to find a specific piece of your website.  Of course, one of the best ways to do this is simply to change some of the elements of your site that may need work, swap them out, and test the response.  You can also ask someone who's never seen your site to scan it quickly and tell you what they recall (or have them simply speak out loud as they scan the page).

 

Take the results of this test to heart when designing (or redesigning) your own website.  Are you putting your best foot forward?  If your site were scanned, what would stand out the most?  Is your content featured front-and-center?  Or is it being roadblocked by a useless image or other design element?

 

Remember:  we don't get the reader's attention for very long unless we give them a compelling reason to stay.