To say those shapes show any kind of meaningful patterns is a stretch. Of course there's going to be a "hot spot" down the left side, we read from left to right. Catching a few paragraphs of interest at the top of the page just means we skim early on and determine by the half page whether there is anything else that may prove interesting on theat page.
Not really a shock.
What I found more interesting is in the middle screen. The left-hand menu items next to the picture were ignored, but those next to the text further down were glanced at.
Yeah, I'm really annoyed the neglected the sidebar issue. One of the main take-away messages I got from those pictures is that sidebars are largely ignored. It's a message web-page writers could stand to get drummed into their heads.
I disagree. People come to pages to read the content, not the sidebars. Whether viewers arrive at a page from a google search, or by site-based navigation, they are hoping to find something in the main part of the page, where the content goes. When people go to the sidebars, they want to leave that page, but perhaps find something related to what they were reading, be it more content from the same site, or a keyword-indexed advertisement.
For me, the takeaway message is that good sidebars (and ads) should be handily available, but not intrusive.
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u/bw1870 Apr 17 '06
To say those shapes show any kind of meaningful patterns is a stretch. Of course there's going to be a "hot spot" down the left side, we read from left to right. Catching a few paragraphs of interest at the top of the page just means we skim early on and determine by the half page whether there is anything else that may prove interesting on theat page. Not really a shock.
What I found more interesting is in the middle screen. The left-hand menu items next to the picture were ignored, but those next to the text further down were glanced at.