Have you ever wondered how people read online content such as websites and PDF-formatted white papers?
To be honest the thought really hadn’t occurred to me until I ran into an article on the UseIt.com website called, “F-Shaped Patterns for Reading” <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html> . The article is written by Jakob Nielsen <http://www.useit.com/jakob/> , an expert in website usability studies.
The article discusses an eyetracking study <http://www.useit.com/eyetracking/> , where they recorded how 232 online users looked at thousands of Web pages. The study found that users employ a dominant reading pattern that looks somewhat like an F and has the following behaviors:
- Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F’s top bar.
- Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F’s lower bar.
- Finally, users scan the content’s left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F’s stem.
Here is what the eyetracking heatmap looked like from their study. Notice the very apparent F-pattern in the center.
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The areas where users looked the most are colored red; the areas in yellow indicate fewer views; the blue areas represented the least-viewed regions of the webpage. Gray areas didn’t attract any significant views. Based on this research, Nielsen summarizes how web content experts can improve their online content:
- Users won’t read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won’t.
- The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There’s some hope that users will actually read this material, though they’ll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.
- Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behavior. They’ll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words.
So besides these suggestions, what can we apply to the realm of white papers? Here are a few suggestions that come to mind:
1. Your main headings and subheads are extremely critical.
One of the areas that was dominantly red was the top of the page. This is the area where a heading or subhead (middle line of the F) would be placed. Readers will look at this area first, so make sure your headings and subheads are to the point, succinct, and are clearly understood.
2. Readers will spend a lot of time looking at your left margin callouts.
A callout (also known as ‘pull-quote’) is a portion of text extracted from the main content that is set within the margin areas. Its purpose is to quickly deliver important business messages, which can range from six to 20 words. The study shows that the left center margin is an area of the page that viewers spend the most time. Your left side should be the preferred location for your callouts based on these studies.
3. Bottom of page footnotes may not get noticed.
White paper writers have always wondered about the preferred place for footnotes, either at the bottom of the page or in a summary at the end. This study would reinforce the latter. In fact, it seems that all information placed at the bottom of the page including document titles, page numbers, and/or section descriptions would also go largely unnoticed.
The Bottom Line
For the skeptics in the crowd, clearly websites are not read in the same way as white papers. Reader spend more time reading white paper content because of the ‘richness’ and detail associated with its content. But the extensive periods of time that most online users spend on online must have some impact on reading habits that ultimately influence the way that readers read white papers. I believe there is a link between the two, and one of the reasons why I have been a proponent of ‘Short Attention Marketing”.
If you’re interested in reading more about this topic, please download my free white paper, <a target=”_blank” href="http://www.whitepapercompany.com/docs/sam.php/”>
“Ensuring that Your White Papers Appeal to Busy Executive Readers“</a>.
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