 Ever thought about the way a web page is browsed? Have you taken time to study common scan patterns? It makes a big difference to know how your visitors interact with your pages and this article is a good starting point.
Center – left – right
Many studies have been conducted on the matter and they all have similar results. Visitors are quick to learn effective browsing patterns based on the way information is found on the web, and they all scan a page the same way: center – left – right.
The average visitor will first scan the upper-central area of the page looking for the main content, then the sides looking for important information and navigation controls.
Users:
- Avoid advertisement
- May not look where they don’t expect to find useful information
- Rather scroll the page to move the content higher than look at the bottom of the screen.
- Rarely scroll a long page all the way
Menus
Users are familiar with menus; they understand where they are found and their purpose. Navigation usually resides at the top, left and/or bottom of the page. If you plan to put it somewhere else, try to make it extra obvious.
Links
Make sure all your links look like links. Users understand underlined links and the blue/purple color. If you are going to part from this common scheme, make sure your links are obvious and they all resemble each other.
Content
Visitors rarely read a full article or sets of information. They will often scan for cues such as headlines, bold text, different fonts, etc. You can help your user by providing these cues.
- Bottom line -
Try to be predictable, unless your goal is to irritate or misinform. Visitors are used to common web site traits and they will look for them in your site.
Author : Esopo, Read 2984 times, Comments: 3| Rating : |   | | Friday, 9. December 2005 |
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