Finding the sweet spot between a beautiful design and a functional design used to be a mysterious challenge left to designers crack.
Currently, there are entire institutions dedicated to performing usability tests that serve to demystify the user experience and explain how a website visitor interacts with a site. Several years ago, virtualhosting.com posted a fascinating article about website visitor eye tracking studies that revealed some very interesting tidbits on how your website design affects your visitors. Despite its age, I feel that many of its findings are quite relevant to the modern web and how visitors interact with websites. I hand picked several of their main points to discuss further here, you may view the list and their explanations in full at: 23 Actionable Lessons from Eye-Tracking Studies
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1. Text attracts attention before graphics.
I instinctively want to disagree with this one. After all, everyone loves pictures and good photography can make or break a website's design. However, when a visitor is coming to your website, the majority of the time they are looking for information about what you do, who you are, or how you can make them better informed. Your visitors want real substance, not just visual fluff.
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2. Users initially look at the top left and upper portion of the page before moving down and to the right.
This point touches on the F shape of a user's eye movements over a website. You can use this to your advantage and lay out important calls to action and headlines along this shape to maximize their visibility.
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3. Readers ignore banners.
This should come as no surprise to many of you, users have been bombarded with banner ads on many of their favorite sites, and users are learning to completely tune these out. Because of this, it isn't wise to design calls to action that resemble banner ads too closely in either shape or design.
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4. People generally scan lower portions of the page.
This is a big one in my experience with client relations. All too frequently I get requests to try and stuff everything up on the page to keep the information “above the fold.” With the invention of the scroll wheel on mouses, it has become normal behavior for a user to scroll through a page. An excellent article that expounds on this point can be found at: Life Below 600px
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5. Shorter paragraphs perform better than long ones.
Your visitors are lazy, they want to get the answer to their question as quickly and easily as possible. There is a challenge in balancing the need for text for SEO purposes, and the need to present your information as plainly as possible for your visitors. Users don't read big blocks of text, the shorter and more succinct you can state your point, the more likely it is going to be read. In short, use lists.
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6. Lists hold reader attention longer.
Lists present information in short phrases that make it easy for users to scan and find what they want quickly. Lists are the most efficient way to get your information to your users.
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7. White space is good.
White space is vital to making your content more digestible for the user. By giving your information space to denote its importance, you make it easier for the user to find what they are looking for.
The main goal of user experience studies are to determine how to make your content more accessible and readable by your users. If you would like to find out how EyeMagine can optimize your site's content to allow you to better communicate with your audience, please contact us today.
