We all know that when people go onto websites they are scanning the page to find the information they are looking for. Unlike books or magazines people are more likely to skim instead of read. Many studies have been done to learn how we read websites. This valuable information helps designers and businesses alike create websites with the most essential information in areas that people look at the most.
Here are a few examples of websites with eye tracking represented by heat maps. The color on the map translates to the number of people in the study who stopped in those spots. So the blue spots represent very little eye contact, where as the red spots mean that 100% of the people in the study stared at that spot. As you can see very little people looked in middle or bottom right of the webpage. On average people will spend 5 seconds on a webpage to look for information. If they can’t find it they will move on to another webpage or website.
Now that you can see how people look at website, look at your own website. Is the most important information in the top left corner of your website? Is the most important content in the first 2 paragraphs of your webpage?
Along with placement your content is equally important. Having a skim-friendly content will make it easier for people to find what they are looking for and closer to spending money on your products or services. When writing content for a website, make sure that you use bulleted lists and short paragraphs. Identify the paragraphs with bold titles and make sure not to have too much content per page. People don’t like to scroll down a lot, so try not to overwhelm them with too much text.
If you need help analyzing your website to see what you can do to make it more user friendly, contact Infinite Web Designs today.
