Eye-tracking Study Shows How Users Scan Web Pages

apatrick writes "An article in UsabilityNews.com describes an experiment where Internet users' eyes were tracked while they searched for information on WWW pages from three well-known newspapers. The findings indicated that people learn very quickly where ads are usually placed on web pages, and then they no longer look there. The results also show that users look to the left hand side for navigation menus, and they scan from the middle of the page outward. Such results may be useful for developers wanting to make their pages more usable, or to attract the users' attention."

Applied Research

[4of12]

So that's why the big box is placed annoyingly and unavoidably right under the story post here at Slashdot.

BTW, I predict that widespread uptake of DVRs and the ability to fast forward through commercials will cause similar Innovations to occur.

Newscrawl style advertisements are coming.

Re:Applied Research

[idiotfromia]

I haven't seen any of those large boxes at slashdot in a long time since I have added the Adblock [texturizer.net] extension to Firebird.

Re:Applied Research

[_iris]

And then we'll see $15 devices to blank out top 15 lines on the top or bottom of the screen.

Applied -- but not to usability

[jtheory]

How can they call that "usability" news?
Sure, like the /. editor said, this info can "may be useful for developers wanting to make their pages more usable" but that sure isn't the point of the article.

Usability is about helping the user make USE of the website, isn't it? Well, it seems those pesky users are getting too smart for their own good (somehow they're jumping directly to the useful parts!) -- quick, let's figure out how to stop this nonsense!

Seriously, I know that online advertising plays an important role in funding freely available sites. But on a website that's purportedly all about usability, it blows my mind that they don't even mention the negative impact that an advertising method that *really* catches the users' eyes will have. Those ads are *detracting* from the usefulness of the site; the slashdot ad box right under the story is a little annoying, because you have to scroll past it to get to what you want (the fr0st p1st, of course). Designers need to keep the balance in mind (and it shouldn't be left out of the discussion).

Personally, when I have to use IE for some reason, I suddenly remember what it's like using the an internet saturated in popup windows and manically-flashing ads... and I can't get through it. I can't concentrate enough to read an article when there's something that simply won't stop flashing right in the middle of the text.

Sure it gets my attention. My eyes can't stop jumping back to that flashing thing. Sometimes I even go to the advertised website, and submit their domain registrant's info into all available forms. Funny, that probably shows up on their statistics as another big win.

Google's text links are okay (which is a good thing, since Mozilla won't block those for me!) -- I'll even click one if it looks relevant. That's the future of web advertising, I think.

Re:Applied -- but not to usability

[AShocka]

Usability is associated with the studies of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), it's quite a broad field, with professionals in many areas of research and application, including engineering ergonomic devices.

Re:Applied Research

[gavri]

What big box? :)
--
Proud User OF Mozilla Fierbird

Re:Applied Research

[AndyElf]

It is interesting that the sight is called "Usability News" -- yet the article is entirely where-should-we-put-an-ad-to-trick-a-user-centric. Where is "usability" in this?

Re:Applied Research

[AndyElf]

One more -- possibly (one of) the conclusion(s) should have: "people dislike advertising and will adapt their behavior to escape viewing it."

Re:Applied Research

[AndyElf]

And this one:

People could recall the presence of animated advertising on sites much more than static advertising but the recall of the content of animated advertising was not any better than static advertisements.

is simply hillarious: of course they did! That stupid jumping-singing red and yellow thing that has been distracting them at the corner of an eye!

Re:Applied Research

[AndyElf]

(promise, last one) they should also, probably, look at their site logo:

UN UsabilityNews.Com

reads "unusability news"

And this surprises you how??

[ewhenn]

I am not trolling here.

Most webpages all have a very similar layout so it just makes sense to begin looking for navigation bars on the left hand side. Why would you start elsewhere? Also most of the 'meat' of a page is in the middle, ie. ads are usually pushed off to the sides, so as far as starting from the middle goes, it just makes sense. People didn't come to see ads, they came to see content.

Re:And this surprises you how??

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, indeed most webpages have menus at the left. But if there's a lot of text on the webpage, I prefer the menu on the right - that way, when reading left-to-right text, the end-of-line "flyback" is a bit quicker (for me, anyway) because I don't have to avoid the left menu.

Research isn't for finding out only the surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of it is checking what's obvious at the time, to make sure it's true, and find out the details.

Re:And this surprises you how??

[cattail.nu]

One of the main reasons for moving my website from Geocities to a commercial account was to get rid of the ads. They clashed with my color schemes and content. To me, it is worth the hosting fee cost to have my page the way I want it.

Redo

[Apreche]

I would love to see the study redone comparing users of say IE and Firebird. I think that users like myself who don't see any ads on websites could potentially have different reading patters. I often find myself looking in the top left or center of pages first to look for new headlines and to verify which site I am at. Of course that's when I'm conciously thinking about it and is not empirical data.

I'm also worried that studies like this may be used to put advertising in different more annoying places in more annoying ways making it harder to block and ignore.

And if you are wondering how to remove all ads in firebird check this out

http://www.texturizer.net/firebird/adblock.html

Re:Redo

[Carnildo]

I'm also worried that studies like this may be used to put advertising in different more annoying places in more annoying ways making it harder to block and ignore.

They've already got that. The main reason I block javascript-based ads was experience with an ad that placed itself squarely under the mouse pointer.

Re:Redo

[ealar dlanvuli]

Why are you using IE?

Re: SIG

[Zork the Almighty]

I live in a giant bucket.

My spoon is too big.

Re:Redo

[BCoates]

There's not check box for, "No, I don't want to install that stuff, ever".

There is in IE, and has always been as far as I know.

Also consider a filtering proxy

[aspargillus]

I am using privoxy [privoxy.org] for quite a while now. It gets rid of almost anything. And if some annoyance gets past it, you can modify the filters it applies or even write a new one. (Heavy regex hackery, so beware!)

Hmm

[daeley]

I was going to post a insightful reply, but got distracted by cool flashing ThinkGeek adverts. Ooooh, shiny!!!!

Seriously though, I was a bit nonplussed to be spoken to by Michael Jordan the other day whilst browsing the Yahoo site. Turns out it was a Flash banner ad for an underwear company, for which the purported greatest basketball player of all time was hawking. Yes, it caused me to glance up, but then it also caused the following sequence: a scowl, an epithet, an immediate drop in my opinion of MJ and the product, and a drop in the likelihood I will either buy the product or use Yahoo as a resource.

My fear is that as broadband becomes more commonplace, it's not going to mean faster browsing for everybody, it's going to be mean actual commercials on the web. To quote Snoopy: "Blech!"

Re:Hmm

[UpLateDrinkingCoffee]

I have the same reaction to really intrusive ads... I consider anything that steals focus on the web VERY intrusive. Now the question is, why do ads on the web that steal focus anger me much more than ads, say, on TV that really do the exact same thing?

I think it's because of the medium... television puts us into a much more passive state. We accept what is streamed to us, and this extends to advertisements too. The web, on the other hand, is much more like print. Our minds are more active when surfi

Re:Hmm

[Mr. Slippery]

Turns out it was a Flash banner ad for an underwear company

There ought to be a convenient way to turn plugins like flash on and off in the browser. Right now I've made a pair of one-line shell scripts to do it:

flashon: mv /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so.xxx /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so

flashoff: mv /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so.xxx

I usually have it off.

I simply can't read a website with dancing animations. I don't mean "I don't

Re:Hmm

[Monkelectric]

a scowl, an epithet, an immediate drop in my opinion of MJ and the product,

Well what was the product?!? I'm dying to know!!

Menu Placement

[waldoj]

The information regarding menu placement is very interesting. As a developer, I've long been torn over the side on which the menu should go. UI testing on some of my client's sites has shown that people are more likely to look on the left-hand side,but I've also seen credible studies that keeping the menu on the right-hand side (near the scroll bar) is preferable, because it puts the menu near where the mouse will already be.

Now that a proper study has been done on the topic, I imagine that I should start moving menus over to the left-hand side of the page. It might be less efficient, but even crappy standards are still standards.

-Waldo Jaquith

Re:Menu Placement

[advocate_one]

The scroll bar's in the wrong place then... bummer...

Re:Menu Placement

[Carnildo]

Now that a proper study has been done on the topic, I imagine that I should start moving menus over to the left-hand side of the page. It might be less efficient, but even crappy standards are still standards.

A quick, non-scientific time-and-motion study shows that it requires about 1/3 of a second and a hand motion of less than an inch to move the mouse pointer from the right-hand scroll bar to the left-hand menu at Slashdot. It takes several seconds (but less hand motion) to locate a menu in a non-sta

Scroll bar?!?

[Vaevictis666]

Yeah but who uses the scroll bar for regular navigation anyways? As I'm reading an article I use either my scroll wheel, the page down key, or the spacebar to scroll the page. Home brings me to the top, End to the bottom.

Only time I ever use the scroll bar is if I know the approximate location of what I'm lookin for on the page, and even then it's easier (in firebird) to just start typing and find-as-you-type picks up on it. (Note that it's better if you disable the option that only does find-as-you-ty

Re:Scroll bar?!?

[phraktyl]

Or, keep the find-as-you-type setting the way it is, and start your text search with a '/' when you want to search for text as well as links.

Speaking of the scroll bar

[jtheory]

I was on a useability mailing list for awhile, and one of the curious tidbits that came out in research was that scrollbars themselves would have been better suited to the LEFT side of the screen.

Think about it -- most text is left justified; titles and headings start at the left (we read left-to-right, after all)... there's just more data over there if you're skimming. Technically, it would make more sense to have the navigation over there too... but again we're stuck with a standard that can't be change

Re:Menu Placement

[SandSpider]

On the other hand, if there's no menu on the left, it'll be easy enough for them to find it on the right hand side. Whereas if you put the menu on the left, then that's always going to pop over your content on a mobile device like a phone. So you should consider whether the menu or the content should hit first on a mobile device for any given application, especially if it's a site that is likely to be visited by mobile devices.

=Brian

How to disable flash in IE

[Goyuix]

While not entirely on-topic, I use this little tidbit to disable flash while I am surfing, only flipping it back on when I absolutely need to (like for watching the latest Strong Bad Email)

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ActiveX Compatibility\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-44455354000 0}

Disable Flash:
"Compatibility Flags" = 0x400

Enable:
"Compatibility Flags" = 0x0

Enjoy your somewhat more advertising free world.

Re:How to disable flash in IE

[I Be Hatin']

I use this little tidbit to disable flash while I am surfing, only flipping it back on when I absolutely need to (like for watching the latest Strong Bad Email)

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ActiveX Compatibility\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-44455354000 0}

Disable Flash:
"Compatibility Flags" = 0x400

Enable:
"Compatibility Flags" = 0x0

Mark my words you weenies: Linux will never be ready for the desktop until it's as intuitive as Windows.

Re:How to disable flash in IE

[0x0d0a]

Actually, most of the things that are difficult to do in Windows are the things that Microsoft has decided should not be in the user's domain, such as second-guessing developers/content producers or obtaining technical data on their system.

The Linux-using contingent traditionally *has* liked to second-guess people and get whatever information they want, so they don't run into this.

New, from EyeTracker Technologies!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are the visitors to your website stealing your valued website's content by reading it without looking at the ads? Do you think that pop-ups, whole-page redirects, and flash animations are not getting you the ROI that you need to survive in this cut-throat business? If user experience, consistency and ease of use do not matter to you, you might need our new AdEye system.

Just demand that users, before they are allowed access to your precious content, install an AdEye USB camera ($199 retail - Windows XP IE 6.0+WMAw/DRM only) and point it at themselves! Our patented NoFoolinMe technology will validate that it is not just a Dilbert doll made to look like a web 'surfer', and then proceed to put up your choice of ads right in their line of site!

If a so-called 'user' tries to look elsewhere to 'steal' useful information, the ad follows their gaze in Real Time, using our Patented Real Time Ad Aware Eye Tracking IE Plugin Technology (#11233451). If their eyes do spot any potentially useful information, you can rest assured that it wasn't because you didn't try!

Act now, and receive free the Force-Ad server-side enhancement (patent pending). With Force-Ad, you can replace the entirety of your content with Ads, thus further ensuring that noone who looks at your website will receive any useful information in a timely manner or easy-to-use way, all from the server side that is under _your_ control!

Can you afford to wait? Call us today!

Good link for industry aggregates

[prostoalex]

Web Design Best Practices [66.102.7.104], was a research project to see where the majority of sites place their links, shopping carts, global navigation, search boxes, etc. Unfortunately, the site seems to have disappeared, so the link is Google cache.

Here's the surviving mirror in Russian [webmascon.com] with links to the resources in English if you scroll down.

Usable?

[jpsowin]

Such results may be useful for developers wanting to make their pages more usable

I would imagine this story will have little interest or impact here. I mean, next thing you know we'll start having stories on how to make your pages standards compliant!

Re:Usable?

[(H)elix1]

I'll second the frustration on UI. As one of those who will browse slashdot with alternative devices - an ipaq or blackberry, the amount of kruft above the postings is infuriating. Why, for the love of god, do I need to scroll through a list of related stories in addition to all the other postings in that section before I get to the posts. "Light" rendering would imply I don't want to wear ridges in my thumb scrolling. Even with a 1400x1050 laptop, there is a good chance I'll have to scroll down to see

Re:Usable?

[CoolVibe]

Rest assured that some people [slashdot.org] will never listen.

;) <-- This is a wink. This comment is not serious. Moderate accordingly.

They're smart alright

[_iris]

The results simply confirm that users have caught on to the basic layout of most web sites, rather than giving insight into the basic instincts of users. Big whoop.

what about right-left language readers?

[forevermore]

Similar studies about printed media have shown that page-scans for right-left readers are almost mirrored from those of left-right readers. Since most web pages follow the top/left nav/margin rule, I'm curious how this affects readers who spend the rest of their time reading right-to-left (Hebrew, Arabic, etc.).

Print Version

[Go Aptran]

I notice that most sites break up a story over 3 or 4 pages to show you more adverts, so the first place my eyes go to is the "print version" icon so I can read the article without having to dodge commercials.

Although, banner ads appear on the top and bottom of print versions as well, at least they aren't in the middle.

Re:Print Version

[Minna Kirai]

break up a story over 3 or 4 pages to show you more adverts,

That's not the only reason. They also do it to get feedback on which stories people actually finish reading.

(It's a small step towards making a web page behave as a connectionful protocol)

Ads: a symptom of inefficient economic machinery

[Anonymous Coward]

You would realize how inefficient if you could get a split-out listing of what you paid for the advertising of a product when you bought it.

Buy a pill. Pay more for ads and promotion than for the research and production. Can't you imagine a better way to know about a pill when you need one than being hammered with ads everywhere you look?

What about Googling for what you need? Is the era of pull-marketing going to replace pushers?

Why should I pay for all the BS and TV shows that have nothing to do with ea

Re:Ads: a symptom of inefficient economic machiner

[perlchild]

Is the era of pull-marketing going to replace pushers?

in a word, no

pull-marketing is more efficient, and user-centric, so the push-marketers will be more and more aggressive, so they don't lose their business model, in five years, they'll be the next RIAA.

--

In North America, your Business Model chooses you, and won't ever let go.

a world without ads. Really?

[vierja]

Every time a discussion like this comes up I think it's cool to stop ads, flash animations and the like. Like TV without commercials. Cool, yeah.

But don't forget most of the sites we visit everyday have business models more or less dependent on the income made from those ads...

So if we all manage to block ads, the interesting sites we access everyday may soon be gone...

C'est a dire, let's make the technology available but difficult enough to install so that only us geeks can surf add-free... hehe...

Re:a world without ads. Really?

[pirhana]

> but keep in mind that many many sites wouldn't be there if nobody saw their ads...

I understand your thinking, but let me disagree with you. Most of the sites which provide "good" content(ofcourse what is "good" is very very objective) are not dependent on ads much. This is especially true in the case of news sites. Most of the good news site( I dont mean the highly biased and propogandistic mainstream ones) are not ad based. Also, I am sure even if this ads become irrelevent, some other model with mor

So where's the news?

[drpatt]

Way back in the day of the original Prodigy videotext service, the bottom quarter of each page was an ad. It was well known that Prodigy users (including me) trained themselves unconsciously to blank that part of the screen from their minds. The rest just sums up what we have always known. People generally don't read Web pages; they scan.

this would seem fairly useless

[AssFace]

The fact that they ignore ads is likely not web page specific - it is likely just human nature. Things that we see all of the time, we stop registering when we take in a scene and we assume they are there. It is just an economy thing - the same reason learning to drive a car is confusing and complicated at first, and over time it is no big deal to take your eyes off of things briefly.

It is very likely that I don't scan the slashdot logo anymore or the icons at the top either.

The left to right scanning is

question

[perlchild]

it's interesting, but why did they take only three newspaper sites as their source? Wouldn't that skew the sample towards daily readers?

A company I worked for did this research.

[Anonymous Freak]

WebCriteria (now defunct, bought by another company,) did research on this along with Reed College back in 1999-2000. We had a much larger sample than three daily newspaper websites, and used all sorts of fancy tech to do it. (Cameras linked to computers doing eye-tracking, combined with screen capturing, to match exactly what they were looking at. They were allowed to surf whatever websites they wanted, but we tried to keep them viewing 'commercial' websites.)

We used this data to write a program that w