Every webmaster wonders what they can do to improve the popularity of their webpage. Should they write more articles, lower their prices or create a message board? Well the answer to this predicament could be found in the new eye tracking studies, which measure people’s physical responses to the web. The latest eye tracking studies demonstrate how people read web content and how their brains acquire or discard information. This means that you can actually create content that makes use of this information. By targeting your preferred market in the best possible way, you will be able to increase your site’s popularity and go up in rankings. After all the old adage holds true: give your customers what they want and they will be back for more.

People like to believe that they are utterly unique and that they have their own singular way of doing things. Nevertheless, this is simply not true. The following are some of the rules and patterns that came out of these eye tracking studies. I also included suggestions of how you can use these findings to improve your own webpages.

Rule #1 – Reading Patterns

No matter what type of web content people are reading they have a tendency to read in an F pattern.

• Users first read the top line of the page from left to right.
• Users then move down the page and again read from left to right.
• Finally, in order to finish the page, users visually scan the rest of the content from top to bottom focusing on the left side of the page.

What you can learn from this:

• The starting sentences of the first two paragraphs must be exceptionally interesting to encourage people to keep reading.
• If you have links that you want people to click on, place them on the left side of the screen. This might require reformatting the article.
• Divide the article into sections and place the headings of each section on the left side of the screen. This way you have a greater chance of attracting users’ attention while they are scanning the article.

Rule #2 – White Space

Most webmasters think that white-space is boring and that users will ignore sites that heavily rely on this technique. However, eye tracking studies show that users actually understand more and are happier when they are presented with less content.

• People’s comprehension increases when they are offered shorter articles.
• Bullets and subheadings improve the overall grasp of the information presented.
• Pictures make the overall article more memorable to the users.

What you can learn from this:

• Keep your articles short and use bullet points or subheadings to underline key ideas.
• Use interesting pictures to make information more memorable. But be careful not to overdo this or you risk losing more than you gain.
• Always keep your target market in mind. Make the article as long as you can, but not a word longer than necessary.
• Cut down on the noise and make your message crisp and clear for your users. Eliminate extra graphics, background colors, and unnecessary words.

Rule # 3 - Elderly & Low-Literacy Users

As web is expanding and reaching new parts of the world’s population, low-literacy users are becoming much more common. The studies show that they have very different reading patterns than your typical internet population. Even if your business does not target third-world population, you should understand these results since older users display very similar reading patterns.

• Low-literacy users do not scan the pages in a way that high-literacy users have become accustomed to doing.
• Low-literacy individual read almost every single word in an article before they are ready to move on.
• Low-literacy readers can become frustrated if too many pictures interrupt the flow of the article. These readers are willing to leave the article if the structure or content gets to be too complicated.
• Low-literacy readers do not like long articles since they often require them to scroll down and this breaks their concentration.

What you can learn from this:

• Your site should have information that is delivered in short and crisp paragraphs. Do not use complicated words, and keep your sentences short.
• If you want to use pictures place them at the very end or the very beginning of the paragraph. Do not intermingle text and graphics.
• Keep your articles short so that scrolling is not necessary to read the whole article.