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In a recent article I talked about Google AdSense placement based on eye-tracking research. However, research by The Pointer Institute, Eye tools 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. In a recent article I talked about Google AdSense placement based on eye-tracking research. However, research by The Pointer Institute, Eye tools 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 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. Drop caps (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.
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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 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. Drop caps (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.
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