Executive Summary
We all know that web users are time poor and fickle when it
comes to visiting sites on the web. We are constantly bombarded by
advertising and promotions in all their forms. However, some of
these advertisements we attend to while others we don't. Why is
that?
The web has been with us for a number of years but up to now
there have been very few rules to help designers design sites that
support the way we, as consumers, want to use them. Where should
design elements - logos, search, and advertisements - appear on a
site?
The Usability Company and Eyetracker recently conducted an
eyetracking study to determine where people look on a page when
they visit a web site. They studied eye movements of people using
three well-known newspaper sites - The Times, The Guardian and The
Financial Times.
Eyetracking offers information that cannot possibly be obtained
by traditional usability testing and market research
methodologies. The human brain processes visual information very
quickly. When looking at a web page we make subconscious decisions
as to the importance of the information viewed within
microseconds. If an advert is perceived to be sufficiently
interesting then fixations are considerably longer.
Participants in the research were asked to complete a number of
very simple tasks on the three sites. These tasks were typical of
the kinds of things people would be doing in the real world. For
example, the first task they were asked to complete was 'Please go
to the Business section of the site'. The order of the sites was
rotated to minimise any learning effects.
While using the sites peoples' eye movements were recorded and
they were questioned about their impressions of the sites. Each
participant completed a questionnaire to determine if they could
recall the advertisements on each site.
Key findings
The research has offered some very interesting findings:
People learned very quickly where advertisements were likely to
appear on a site and subsequently ignored those areas of the page
when browsing. For example, while people viewed the adverts on the
right hand side of the Guardian home page they rarely, if ever,
looked to the right hand side of subsequent pages on the Guardian
site - they had 'learned' that this area was reserved for
advertising and therefore not of interest to them. Likewise having
seen the banner ad at the top of The Times homepage very few
people looked at the banner ad on other pages of the site.
This finding has, of course, repercussions for all those sites
that have a template design where advertisements will always be
presented in the same position. It would certainly be more
effective to alter the positioning of advertising from page to
page (or at least section to section) of a site.
When asked to go to one of the main sections of the sites (i.e.
business section) participants found the section much faster on
The Times and The FT sites compared to the Guardian site. The
reasons are twofold: people have learned that a site's main
navigation resides more often than not on the left hand side of
the page (when asked to find the sites' main sections peoples'
eyes went directly to the left hand side of the page) people find
it much easier to scan information vertically than horizontally
Advertising positioned within the body of the site has a far
greater probability of being recalled than advertising located in
the 'traditional' areas for advertising -at the top of the page
and to the right hand side.
Not surprisingly people's eyes were drawn to images and to
headlines. However, peoples eyes were much more likely to fixate
on a line of text rather than a block. This is consistent with the
finding in many usability studies that people are reluctant to
read online - preferring to scan instead.
People could recall the presence of animated advertising on
sites much more than static advertising but the recall of the
content of animated advertising was not any better than static
advertisements.
While there were variations in the eye movements of people from
site to site and even from page to page within each site the
following pattern consistently emerged: It appears that people
look to the middle of a page initially then towards the area
usually inhabited by the logo of the site, followed by the left
hand side (where they expect to find the main navigation) before
scanning the areas to the right of the page.
The findings have repercussions for site owners. Web site
design should be considered less of an art and more of a science
with a better understanding of how people view sites driving the
design agenda.
Notes:
- The full version of the report, which includes illustrations
and data analysis, is available for download in the Resources
section of The Usability Company's website.
- You may also email karl.havard@foviance.com
and request a Word version of the report.
- The Eyetracking report has generated much press interest and
coverage. To read some of the coverage so far, please go to
our press coverage
section.
Return to
newsletter |
