- F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content
- Banner Blindness — Old and New Findings
- Fancy Formatting, Fancy Words = Looks Like a Promotion = Ignored
- Show Numbers as Numerals
- Talking-Head Video Is Boring Online
- How Journalists Read Press Areas of Corporate Websites
- How Investors Read IR Information on Publicly-Traded Companies' Websites
- Email Newsletters: Surviving Inbox Congestion
- Eyetracking Methodology: free 159-page report on how to run your own eyetracking studies
Example of an eyetracking "heatmap" that shows how much users looked at different parts of a Web page. Areas where users looked the most are colored red; the yellow areas indicate fewer fixations, followed by the least-viewed blue areas. Gray areas didn't attract any fixations.
The above example is from a website's "About Us" pages. The heatmap clearly shows users' tendency to read in an "F" pattern, and their focus on information that's presented in bulleted lists. In this case, there's also a small amount of attention to the "see also" area, but no viewing of the promotions in the rightmost column. (See our separate research project for detailed guidelines for the design of "About Us" areas of corporate websites.)
Example of eyetracking from an e-commerce checkout process. In this shopping cart, users didn't look much at the cross-selling offers, which is a common finding. (See our separate research project for detailed guidelines for the design of e-commerce sites.)
Our full-day seminar on Fundamental Guidelines for Web Usability includes many detailed results from our eyetracking studies (and from many other studies), often shown as slow-motion gaze replay videos. The seminar is available for in-house presentation at your company ($9,000+travel). If interested, contact
The book authors: Kara Pernice and Jakob Nielsen
Our eyetracking research included substantial components (not reported in the book) run by Amy Schade, who studied people's use of email newsletters and shoppers' use of e-commerce websites, and Hoa Loranger, who tested journalists' use of PR areas, investors' use of IR areas, and general users' use of the "About Us" areas on corporate websites. We got much help from our research assistants: Sukeshini A. Grandhi (Suki), Tatyana S. Nikolayeva, David Shulman, and John Scanlan.
The eyetracking equipment we use for our research. Looks like a normal computer, doesn't it? Of course, that's exactly the point, because we want users to work normally. The cameras and infrared emitters are hidden behind small dark windows at the top and bottom of the monitor. We use a separate small webcam to capture the user's facial expressions (sitting on the left loudspeaker), but even that is fairly unobtrusive, and test participants quickly tune it out.
Pre-order our upcoming book about these studies:
- from Amazon.com
or BN.com
or for U.K./Europe:
- from Amazon.co.uk
We completed the last edits early November, and the book is scheduled to come off the printer on December 3, 2009. Add delays for warehousing, shipping, and fulfillment, and it should be in bookstores in the U.S. by mid-December.
In other countries, additional shipping delays mean that January 2010 is the realistic time for bookstore availability. Sorry. (You can always order from one of the U.S. e-commerce sites linked above, and they can ship it to you to arrive in time for the holidays in case you need a present for somebody with an interest in Web usability.)
Press Coverage
USA Today'Sneak Peek' Into Net Surfers' Brains
Poynter Institute
What Makes Web Images Attractive
MediaPost
Wise Words About Branding From The Usability Sage