The user's vertical attention distribution of the web page is relatively simple: the first half of the information entering people's field of vision is more information hidden than the following part. Now, let’s take a look at the user’s attention distribution in the horizontal direction of the web page. Using the database we collected before, it is easy to find that when users browsing web pages, the weights of attention allocation from left to right are as follows:
In this chart, each article has a horizontal axis that represents 100 pixels, and 100% of the vertical axis indicates the time the user starts browsing from the far left to the browsing.
People spend more than twice the time on the right side on the left side and they make the choice for granted:
The left half took 69% of the time; the right half took 30% of the time;
The remaining 1% of the browsing time is spent in the 1024 pixels that can be viewed first. Some information can only be seen after scrolling horizontally. This information suggests that we should fix the horizontal bar to avoid scrolling horizontally.
The information we are talking about here is actually in the "below column" that exceeds the screen on the right side of the obscured, rather than the literal "below". On the other hand, if you compare horizontal and vertical browsing, the vertical user will skip about 20% of the information, while the horizontal they will only ignore about 1% of the information. (I think in fact, as many as twenty times, the horizontal roller is bad because it really bothers the user and attracts less attention.)
Our study used a 1,024 × 768 monitor. With a larger monitor, we want to spend less scrolling to see more content on the right, no matter what the same is true under normal mode.
The leftmost part usually includes a navigation bar, so it's no surprise that it's paying attention to grow after 200 pixels, plus this most watched 300-500 pixels. People tend to focus on the main content area of the first line at the beginning.
Language reading direction from left to right
Our usability studies in areas from the to left reading habits found that people pay more attention to the beginning of a line. Obviously, in these languages, the text starts from the right. Even so, we may not necessarily find the corresponding Eyetracking process. For example, Arabic and Hebrew also have the above charts. (The general meaning is that when a country or region's reading habits are from right to left, their attention time distribution graph will form a mirror relationship with the above graph, that is, the horizontal coordinates are written from right to left.)
The reason is that websites that read languages from right to left do not always adopt left to right layout design. Here is the layout from the Dubai newspaper Emarat Al Youm and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz website:
Emarat Al Youm is a true right-aligned website. Unlike this, Haaretz is a right-aligned website with text, but still has a left navigation bar. Therefore, this Eyetracking (I will translate it for the time being) research may be more complicated than our ordinary English website.
Priority to regular layout
Go back to the languages we have routinely read from left to right, such as Chinese, English, Russian, or even Japanese. What does our discovery mean?
Simply put, adhere to the traditional website layout because it perfectly conforms to people's habit of browsing web pages.
Keeping the navigation consistent on the left is a list of people who want to find;
Pay more attention to the arrangement of the main content from left to right;
The most important content should account for one-third or even half of the entire page width. This is the most concerned thing for users;
Keep the secondary content on the right. It won't get too much attention, but it's enough! Not every content can get a first-class position, you need a place to place content that is not that important.
Interestingly, the website layout shown in this large image is extremely similar to the mainstream intranet layout. But this is just a website.
The dominant browsing model and web layout obviously evolved into a subordinate relationship:
People are trained to pay attention to certain places because there is usually the most important information distributed there;
As of now, when companies create website layouts, their information is arranged according to how people allocate their entire page attention.
If it is contrary to the traditional layout, some users will change their attention habits when browsing your website. If you place important things on the right, it may happen that those (less) users find this information in that area will take more time than a typical user domain.
This is not if the user decides in advance: "I only spend 2.5% of my time looking from left to right, browsing 1000 and 1100 pixels this section. ”
Anyway, the price of your deviating from traditional design is: When users initially browse your page, they will spend a lot of time looking for what they need.
If your webpage layout meets the user's browsing needs and is not placed in a non-traditional position, they may unconsciously find information easily and fulfill their desires.
Moreover, when your website takes users for granted, your business will be smoother.