How to Layout Your Website for Ultimate Usability

Ever heard the saying "power is nothing without control"? While this is true for a finely tuned sports car, a similar analogy can be said for a website: "content is nothing without loyalty". Not quite as sexy but true nevertheless. One factor in building user loyalty is indeed fresh content, but the other side of the equation for a compelling user experience is the usability of a website. If content is king, usability is it's trusted advisor. Here are some general tips to follow to help your engage your users and build website loyalty.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. People scan sites like they read a book. Eyes most often fixate first in the upper left one-third of the page, and then hover in that area before going left to right.

2. It's better at the top. The top portion rules in terms of navigation bar use.

3. Small type pulls users in. Smaller type encourages focused viewing behavior while larger type promotes scanning.

4. Short attention spans - a headline has less than a second to grab a visitor's attention.

5. Right is right. Right-side navigation results in more eye fixations and longer viewing duration than left-side navigation. This is likely due to the relative novelty of right-side navigation.

6. Text before graphics - users tend to fixate on text before looking at images.

7. Link images - people tend to click on images, even when the images do not take them anywhere. While this may be a learned response, take advantage by linking images to relevant content or pages within the site.

8. People try to ignore ads. Right-side ads do not do well. Ads in the left portions of a homepage receive more views than those in other areas.

9. Text ads rule. Ads that are not separated from content with white space or lines do better than those that are. Text ads get more attention than graphic ads.

Tips & Warnings

• Beware the "visual dead zone". Eyetools, a website eyetracking analysis company, tracked eye movement on an older E-Trade homepage, and then inserted gibberish into the center-right portion of the site that was consistently ignored (called the visual dead zone). When they asked users to point out anything unusual about the homepage, only one out of 25 users noticed the gibberish. Companies with visual dead space need to redesign their sites: dead-zone text goes unread!

Resources

• Eyetools Eyetracking Research Blog

[BCPASSIONS]

on 11/19/2008 Great Tips!!!

[sunshine11219]

on 11/4/2008 good advice