Eye Tracking - Part 2
Boosting visitor response
Yes, there’s even more! In our last issue, we looked at the latest eye-tracking research and how findings can help you get the best response from visitors to your website.
If you recall, US scientists used special technology to track people’s eye movements over various web page layouts. Among other important titbits, they found that people looked at text before they looked at images, and concluded how you could craft your headlines to grab immediate attention.
If you didn’t catch this essential info, don’t panic! You can read it now.
But that was just the start. The research produced even more gems to give your web pages even more eye-catching power…
Copy style and layout
Eyetracking studies proved that shorter paragraphs hold people’s attention, while longer clusters tend to put people off reading. (Remember, we’re a lazy bunch!)
Researchers found that the optimum paragraph length for holding attention was just a sentence or two! So when you find that you’re using paragraphs of 60 words or more, try separating the text into more palatable chunks of 20 – 30 words.
Some site owners split their web copy into two or more columns, mimicking newspaper layouts. This may work for printed media, but research showed that it doesn’t perform well on the web, with people losing focus over multiple columns.
If you’re using two-column copy on your site, you’ve probably got more text than you really need. Try cropping it to a more manageable length, or maybe splitting it over two pages.