What Are You Lookin’ At?

Taking In The View by Randy son of Robert

Website visitors are fickle creatures. They click, they scan, they browse, and nary a second goes by they aren’t moving. With all the extraneous content available online these days, people have become exceptional skimmers—the skill is crucial now that almost half their time is spent just looking for what they want.

Eye Movement and Website Usability

For companies hoping to improve their website usability—thereby making it easier for visitors to get from landing point A to selling point B—a basic understanding eye movement and user behavior is a must.

The Critical First Impression

The first impression is crucial. Users whose expectations aren’t met immediately, by what they see on the home page, often become confused, and turn away. The causes are diverse—too much graphical clutter, a missing navigational bar, and even a nonconventional color scheme, can all contribute to reduced website usability.

There’s a simple way of evaluating your initial impact: try flashing a picture of your home page in front of a new user for a few seconds and ask what he or she remembers.  Another thing to do is to check what other similar websites are doing, since most visitor expectations are formed by precedent. For instance, informational sites often minimize glitz and focus on a tight typographical design. Business-to-business websites often feature sedate color schemes that lean toward the blue end of the spectrum. Nearly every website places navigational buttons at the top or top-left of the main page, and there’s a good reason why.

The F-Shaped Pattern

Experts who track eye movement across web pages have discovered an interesting pattern that has huge implications for website usability. Employing advanced cameras and other equipment, they’ve learned that website skimmers often zip over page content in an F-shaped pattern. The average eye drags first over the top banner, then runs even more quickly over the page sub-heading or content descriptor just below. Then, taking occasional stops for the interesting picture, the eye moves down along the right site of the page searching for keywords or subjects of interest. Assuming the content has engaged the user, the eye ends up at the bottom left-hand corner of the page.

This pattern isn’t absolute, but understanding it can be extremely helpful in improving website usability. By placing the navigational structure at the top of the page, you lead the user quickly to where he or she wants to go. Similarly, when you frontload vital content and bulleted lists along the common skim pattern—and place related links or further selling info at the bottom of the page—you can significantly raise your website’s usability.

Make Your Website Usable

There are plenty of other ways to improve website usability and keep visitors from getting lost on your website. Check out our services or give us a call.