Out cool your Web Competition !!!

F means fast. This is how the visitors read your site content. Their eyes move at rapid speed across your page in a pattern that’s very different than what we think.

• Users first read in a horizontally, across the upper part of the content forming F’s top bar.
• Then, users look down the page and read across in a second horizontal movement that is generally over a shorter area than the previous one forming F’s lower bar.
• Last, users scan the content’s left side in a vertical movement. This time generally the users go through slowly, so it appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. This last element forms the F’s stem.

 Heatmaps from user eyetracking studies. Red are the areas where the visitors looks the most; yellow areas marks lesser views, followed by the least-viewed blue areas. Grey areas didn’t attract any attention.

Significance of the F Pattern

The F pattern’s significance for Web design are clear and show the importance of following the guidelines for writing for the Web instead of re-purposing print content:

• Visitors don’t read the content descriptively word-by-word.
• The couple of first paragraph must be informative. Visitors might read this material.
• Always start the subheads, paragraphs and bullets informatively.

Tips for making your site attractive

• Headlines draws more attention than pictures 
• First couple of words of the headline are most read 
• Closer reading are promoted by smaller type 
• Top of the page is the most navigated 
• Short paragraphs promotes reading 
• Ads placed closer to content attracts attention 
• Multimedia works better than text for conceptual information 
• Text ads are more popular than graphic ads