What eye-tracking studies imply for your website

Where should you place your most important text on your web page? According to eye tracking studies by Jakob Neilsen, people's eyes scan web pages in an F-shaped pattern, as in the image below. The red areas indicate the longest gaze, blue the shortest, and grey no focus at all.



What does this mean for your website? If you look at the diagram, you can see that the top third of the page, with emphasis on the left side is the most looked at. That's where your most important information should go.

Further down the page use more headings. Since readers spend less time focusing as they scan down a web page, headlines will catch their attention and get them to stop momentarily.

Nielsen also recommends AGAINST using a lot of bright graphics and fancy formatting. He found in his research that anything resembling a banner ad tends to get ignored.