READING WEBSITES

Eyetrack project reveals how people perceive new sites
A very interesting eyetrack research project looked through the eyes of 46 people to learn how they see online news. Here are some highlights:

- Headlines had less than a second of a site visitor's attention
- Smaller type encourages focused viewing behavior
- Larger type promotes scanning
- Shorter paragraphs get more attention than longer ones
- People often looked only at the first couple of words in blurbs
- People typically looked below the first screen
- Navigation placed at the top of a homepage performed best