That’s how viewers read the content on your website — and their eyes move in an “F-pattern” across the page. In a research study that I always quote to my students each semester, website-usability guru Jakob Nielsen found, “Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe.” The study also revealed, “F is for fast. That’s how users read your precious content. In a few seconds, their eyes move at amazing speeds across your website’s words in a pattern that’s very different from what you learned in school.”

To see “heatmaps” from the eye-tracking study, go here. This information can help all of us as we write, design and prepare content to be read on computer screens. In this instance, getting the “F” concept is a good thing! 😉

Until next time,

Kathy Magrino