That's how visitors read on the web--with amazingly FAST eye movements.

Jakob Nielsen has just published an interesting report providing more information about how to organize information on a website.   After studying 200+ users visiting thousands of sites, he summarizes that, "Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe."  Further, he reinforces writing for the web best practices with his findings (and I quote):

• 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.

Having just worked with a client to get rid of a lot of what I call excessive "happy talk" on their site, I feel validated in my advice and approach. 

 

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