Although it’s approaching two years old, Jakob Nielsen’s increasingly legendary eyetracking study continues to fascinate and inform best practices in healthcare website design and writing content at AVID Design.

Although the study is certainly complex, the results aren’t. Most simply, readers read in an F-shaped pattern: First across the headline, and then in a blinding (no pun intended) scan down the left margin of text, with less and less eye movement across the paragraph.

Red areas are where users looked the most; yellow areas, the least. This is the so-called “F pattern” people use to read online content.

Here’s How They REALLY Really Read

And the answer is: They don’t. While the study is eye-opening (again, no pun intended) for explaining how they read, what’s most revealing is with what they read—which is not very much.

So, then what best practices are advised if readers aren’t going to read?

Writing for the Web: Best Practices

Nielsen’s study includes suggested best practices of:

• writing concise content
• focusing content in the first two paragraphs, and
• starting subheads, paragraphs and bullet-points with information-carrying words.

Writing for the Web: Better Best Practices

Those eyetracking study-influenced best practices imply that you shouldn’t write much since it likely won’t be read.

Don’t be misled. Write as much as you want—or more accurately, as much as you need. Just be sure to use the F-pattern to influence your format and style.

For example, this blog: It’s actually quite long. But by breaking it up with bold headlines and bullets, the blog should still be informative to F-pattern readers.

Of course, you read every word, right?

Derek Rudnak | Communications Specialist | AVID Design

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Best Practices, Research and Studies, Writing for the Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.