Eye-tracking Study Shows How Users Scan Web Pages

apatrick writes "An article in UsabilityNews.com describes an experiment where Internet users' eyes were tracked while they searched for information on WWW pages from three well-known newspapers. The findings indicated that people learn very quickly where ads are usually placed on web pages, and then they no longer look there. The results also show that users look to the left hand side for navigation menus, and they scan from the middle of the page outward. Such results may be useful for developers wanting to make their pages more usable, or to attract the users' attention."

Comments

Redo

[Apreche]

I would love to see the study redone comparing users of say IE and Firebird. I think that users like myself who don't see any ads on websites could potentially have different reading patters. I often find myself looking in the top left or center of pages first to look for new headlines and to verify which site I am at. Of course that's when I'm conciously thinking about it and is not empirical data.

I'm also worried that studies like this may be used to put advertising in different more annoying places in more annoying ways making it harder to block and ignore.

And if you are wondering how to remove all ads in firebird check this out

http://www.texturizer.net/firebird/adblock.html

Re:How to disable flash in IE

[I Be Hatin']

I use this little tidbit to disable flash while I am surfing, only flipping it back on when I absolutely need to (like for watching the latest Strong Bad Email)

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ActiveX Compatibility\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-44455354000 0}

Disable Flash:
"Compatibility Flags" = 0x400

Enable:
"Compatibility Flags" = 0x0

Mark my words you weenies: Linux will never be ready for the desktop until it's as intuitive as Windows.