by: Richard Keir
Copyright 2005 Richard Keir

In a recent article I talked about Google AdSense placement based on
eye-tracking research. However, research by The Poynter Institute,
Eyetools and the Estlow Center for Journalism and New Media has a
lot to say about more than where to put an AdSense block.

Designing an eCommerce site is more than making it pretty. You have
certain desired actions you're looking for from your visitors. You
have specific things you want to be sure they see and hopefully act
on. Now, there's some research that can guide your design. Certainly
you want your site to look professional, but you want it to do its
job as effectively as possible too.

People are surprisingly alike in some of their basic visual
behavior. It's been argued that our evolution as hunter-gatherers
has shaped much of our ingrained visual patterns. Whether you buy
that particular argument or not there are still important
commonalities.

Typical behavior on initially viewing a site is to do a fast scan of
the entire visible screen with short focusing periods around the
areas that attract attention. First pass tends to include headlines,
the page logo, photo captions, subheads, links and menu items. And
the big hot spot is the upper left corner of the screen. I haven't
seen any definitive research on whether these patterns also hold for
users with native languages that read any way except left to right,
but I'm assuming most of you are building sites for left-to-right
readers.

The clear message is that your most important real estate is in that
upper left area and that the lower right (particularly if it's below
the fold) is the least likely to receive much attention.

How you use your words in a headline, paragraph or link can make a
huge difference in your success at capturing a visitor's attention.
The concept is called frontloading. Wherever you can make sure your
critical terms appear at the very beginning of headlines, links and
other text. It's still got to make sense, but the first few words
are far more likely to be at least scanned then the middle or end of
a headline or link or the inside of a paragraph.

The exact same words can have drastically different capture rates
depending on their order. You want to maximize the probability that
the visitor will read a whole headline or link and then act on it.
So put the most significant, enticing words first - the ones that
are the best grabbers and convey the subject immediately.

You don't have a lot of time to mess about. It's been reported that
a typical surfer may be off your page in well under 14 seconds
unless something grabs his or her attention fast. Remember the
upper-left? You want to do an especially good job with headlines,
link and text in that area.

Dropcaps (where the first capitalized letter in a line is in a
different, often unusual, font and extends below the normal text
base-line), bolding, font changes and color changes can also serve
as strong eye-attractors. If you try these techniques you need to be
careful that you don't overuse them (your page will look like a
mess), and it's extremely important that you test whether or not
they're actually doing what you want. Annoying as it may be, running
tests is the only way to make sure it's an improvement.

Do you use lists? Have you made sure that they're in-line and as
close to the left margin as possible? Don't ever use an outline
format with multiple indents. People scan down, not across and they
tend to scan close to the left margin. Indent too much and it might
as well be invisible.

An interesting testing result that I read somewhere said that
somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of site visitors don't even see
centered headlines. Sure they look nice and a lot of sites use them,
but if they're totally missed by even 3 percent of your visitors,
you're paying a major price to look good. Suggestion? Put those
headlines up against your left margin.

This also applies to links. Put those links up against the left
margin, not inside a paragraph, centered or off to the right. And if
you want any clicks on a link, never put it in that nearly unseen
lower right area. Might as well just leave it off your page.

How about indented paragraphs? Now there's a great way to start an
argument. Some argue that it attracts the eye, it's different, few
sites use it so you stand out. Others insist that you're far better
off staying left justified and frontloading each paragraph. There's
only one way to resolve it for yourself, yeah, run some tests and
see what works with your visitors on your site.

The bottom line is that once you get beyond the basics of placement,
frontloading, and left-justified links and headlines, you need to
test if you want to fully maximize the effectiveness of your website
design. I wish there were a simpler answer too, but in the end only
testing will tell you what works best for your site.


About the author:
Richard writes, teaches, trains and consults on business and
professional presentations and eCommerce related matters. Visit
http://www.building-ecommerce-websites.comfor more information on
eCommerce sites and eCommerce site building - and
http://www.building-ecommerce-websites.com/articlesfor more
eCommerce articles.