Common behaviour patterns

Eyetrack III found some very common behaviour patterns. Reconnaissance comes first. Eyes flick over the entire screen at whatever attracts their attention. The first hot spots include headlines, captions of images, subheadings, links, menu items and the page's logo. The upper left corner of the screen gets special attention: I suppose that's where people expect to find the good stuff. According to Eyetrack III, the right-hand and lower part of the page consistently gets less attention. When significant content is outside that key upper left corner, it may be virtually invisible when people are making the big decision: whether to read more or quit the page.

Skim-reading

That skim-reading reconnaissance has a purpose: it quickly identifies what people really want to read. When they start actually reading a news story on the Web, they read a larger proportion than if they were reading on paper. Frontload everything especially at the top. Frontloading means starting headlines, paragraphs and links with significant words. The first words then communicate the subject of the headline, paragraph or link. When you frontload your writing, especially at the top of the page, key information is easily caught by the wandering eye.