Recently I have shared with you Eyetracking reports on Social Media sites, so what does an Eyetrack study look like on a Community Web Portal?
The Poynter Institute issued the Eyetrack III studies in 2004 and updated them in 2007, here is a look at what the study revealed concerning areas of design and importance....
"We observed that with news homepages, readers' instincts are to first look at the flag/logo and top headlines in the upper left. The graphic below shows the zones of importance we formulated from the Eyetrack data. While each site is different, you might look at your own website and see what content you have in which zones."
So what did we learn about the 2004 Eyetracker III and 2007 study? Online Journalism Review posted their top findings....
"The third, in 2004, further focused on online reading behavior. The study (conducted by co-columnist Laura Ruel with Steve Outing) used less invasive eyetracking equipment and relied on mocked up news pages to test different aspects of the online reading experience. Key findings from this study included:
Dominant heds most often draw the users eye first when entering the screen
Eyes fixated first in the upper left corner of the page.
Top navigation was most readily seen and used.
Shorter paragraphs were read more than longer ones.
Ads in the upper left and the top of the homepage received the most attention.
Actionable advice from this study included the need for attention-grabbing words at the start of headlines, greater use of "chunking" text into short grafs, and the preference for one column formats for stories rather than multi-columns."
The 2007 report brought with it additional findings that will be very helpful to you in evaluating and selling your Community Web Portal...
"The eye stops data from the online readers was analyzed to see what content elements were most frequently fixated on by users. Here is the heartening, or depressing, statistics on what, out of 11,400 eye stops, got viewed:
Story lists: 35%
Teasers / directionals: 27%
Ads: 18%
Blogs: 4%
Photo galleries: 3%
Podcasts: 1%
Implications? Segmenting content by its form (photo gallery, blog, podcast) rather than by its subject content may well be marginalizing."