Thread: How people scan pages...

HI all,

my site is diet and weightloss - www.flabfallsoff.com and hosted by Voda...

...found this useful and wanted to share it but wasnt sure exaaaactly where to put this - plumped for the SEO section coz if one doesnt optimise one's site for reader's viewing then there's not much use... :-

Trust ppl will get something out of it!

Survey offers a 'sneak peek' into Net surfers' brains
By Edward C. Baig, USA TODAY

Seeing is believing when it comes to understanding how consumers surf the Internet.
And they see very little online — including pricey banner ads screaming for attention. That's one of the findings of a study out today by Nielsen Norman Group, an authority on making websites and products easy to use.

Using sophisticated eye-tracking equipment, the Fremont, Calif., firm was able to track what consumers really look at on the Web vs. what they say they look at.

"This is a sneak peek into people's brains," says Kara Pernice Coyne, the firm's research director.

As more business shifts to the Internet, the study findings show companies still have much to learn about how best to present an online image.
"People spend millions of dollars developing these websites," says Randolph Bias, who teaches at the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. Companies would benefit if they tested their sites more before launching them, he says.

The Nielsen firm asked more than 230 participants to research specific tasks and companies online. Tasks included learning to tie a type of knot called a "bowline," figuring out how to invest $10,000, planning a Colorado ski trip, shopping for a mortgage and deciding whether to adopt a cairn terrier or pharaoh hound from an animal shelter.

Other findings from the firm's study:
• Individuals read Web pages in an "F" pattern. They're more inclined to read longer sentences at the top of a page and less and less as they scroll down. That makes the first two words of a sentence very important.
"People are extremely good at screening out things and focusing in on a small number of salient page elements," says Jakob Nielsen, a principal at the firm.
• Surfers connect well with images of people looking directly at them. It helps if the person in the photo is attractive, but not too good looking.
Photos of people who are clearly professional models are a turnoff. "The person has to be approachable," Pernice Coyne says.
• Images in the middle of a page can present an obstacle course.
• People respond to pictures that provide useful information, not just decoration.
• Consumers will peek at ads in search engines as a "secondary thing," Nielsen says, since they usually have specific product targets in mind.
JetBlue Airways was one of the sites to get it right, Pernice Coyne says. The company did a good job producing an uncluttered, three-column home page. "When there is less on a page, users read more," she says. Pernice Coyne also praised Sears for providing tables that make it easy for potential buyers to compare products by price and other features.

But more often, companies struggle to find a balance between information and design. "We have lots of examples of bad design," she says. For example, surfers who went to the investor relations page at Agere Systems tuned out text boxes with potentially relevant information because they thought they were ads; they were not. Mistaken identity was also a problem at Adelphia's site.

Study participants were baffled by one of ****'s websites. For example, asked to find ****'s New York City store, users landed at ****Style.com. Some users could not tell whether the page was an official **** site.

"That sort of thing happens a lot," Pernice Coyne says. "Companies get
cute about their Web branding."

The study echoes earlier findings that consumers are blind to banner ads. Still, at least one group — small children — doesn't shy away from banner ads, because kids like sites with lots of bright images. "The more eye candy, the more they are going to click," says Allison Druin, an information technology professor at the University of Maryland.

But starting about age 7, kids become more discerning, Druin says.

The above page must have been designed well, as I read every single word !!

Hi planet777, how you doing ??

Hey Dave,

glad you read every word... lol :-

Yeah, I'm doin' good, and U? Howz everything going?

I'm still whaling away on every aspect of the site and the copy and SEO and ... and ... and... lol! It's a challenge but I like it!

cheers for now

Will

heheheh Dave that was a good one!

There is a lot of very good information there and much of it I learned the hard way with my very first site that is still and and doing surprisingly well at the moment!

One thing I think they should have added is about the "Golden Triangle"
This is how a person usually scans a page. The article refers to it as an "F" but the eye study cases I have seen actually show the pattern to be triangle that starts in the upper left of the page (Looking for the logo or address), then scans to the middle right side of the page (your eyes just skim the middle looking for anything interesting in the middle of the page) and then back down to lower left corner. This forms the "Golden Triangle"

Think about and pay attention to how you look at a page when you are looking for something and you first land on a page...notice what you your eye pattern is. It is pretty cool once you pay attention to what you most likely are doing yourself.

I implemented this into a site that I redid a few months ago and my conversions went up about 300%. Check this out HERE

That was a good one David .... You must be using those new glasses I sent you ... lol ...

Yes Motoxxxx - I agree - and it's just the opposite of reading a newspaper ... we always start at the right side of the page ... funny eh ... If I concentrate hard enough, I can beat the norm, and start in the middle, lol ....

And for more information - the more you put on a "home" page - the better the chance of someone going into "overload" and missing most of it. (Somehow this is not true for one page, long, sales pages).

Something else to be aware of - is people can't register a ton of different things - so you should be focusing on ONE or TWO things about yourself you want them to remember.

You might not remember the actual cars for sale - but I'm betting most of you can tell what the focus for the last several months has been about Volvo cars (assuming their ads are similar worldwide). If you don't associate Volvo with safety - then you haven't seen the ads :) - and they build their business based on that.

If everything you're saying are the same attributes that everyone else is saying about your product - find one attribute that you can shine on - and focus on (of course, that people are looking for) and go for it!

Nice post Bethers,

yeah, ONE thing is the, er, thing... lol... great ads for eg always concentrate on only saying one thing... problems come in when the client wants to put everything and the kitchen sink in...

Re the one page sales letters... yes, they are saying a lot but there is still only one THEME... even tho I am a copywriter etc I learned one hell of a lot from Maria Veloso's great book Web Copy that sells - one of the points she makes is not to have ANY distractions: just lead the client inexorably down to the payoff, lol.

Another big point she makes is that 'sales web copy' has to not APPEAR like a sales pitch. Rather it should come across as editorial. Coz, most ppl on the net are not looking to buy, but R looking for information... which is why Moto's comment re his sales went up when he concentrated on Yahoo and MSN is interesting, coz most ppl use Google and they are NOT looking to buy... so you have to strive for no blatant advertising etc...

Cheers

Will

Funny, it seems that in the last week Google has taken a serious interest in several of my sites...

I am sitting on 30 #1 positions for competitive keywords in MSN now and I have one site that is now on page one on Google for a hyper competitive search term (17,000 targeted searches per month and more that 8 million competeting pages and I am up to #9!) Pretty cool.

I knew that if I didn't worry about Google and used MSN at first that Google will catch up at some point...I am now geting about 300 visitors per day on this site....

Cool Moto!

Ya doin' good! It's an inspiration to those of us still languishing at #235 356 479 ... ha ha! :-

Cheers,

Will

Keep at it Will. Your enthusiam will carry you far.

Hey Moto...

Thanks! if there's one thing that will help me succeed, it's PERSEVERANCE. I have found this whole business of setting up one's own website (I had a writer's website before, but had a guy doing that... for $$$!) really hard, all the ins and outs and technical mumbo jumbo, and this going wrong, and questions on that... but I just keep going, day after day after day... and it's starting to bear fruit, for eg, if you want check out my Resources page:

http://www.flabfallsoff.com/weightlo...resources.html

I've added 5 articles to the Diet section, and 5 to the Weight loss section (nothing for the other two yet, but watch this space, lol) I want to add 5 articles every day, so before long the Resources page will have a LOT of material!

I also figured out (with the patient help of Naval and Bethers!!!) how to create a page in its own window!! Which I'm now doing for all my articles! Wooooo hoooo! ha ha.......! :-

I'm also understanding more of what you mean by internal links, that point to other parts of your site. Let's say in one guy's article, he's talking about X. I know there's a ref. to X in another article somewhere else, say a Diet article has a link to Weight loss (one would expect, right? lol) - then you can editorialise, say: [this is also covered here - Ed.] Something like that. So you hyperlink to your OWN pages WITHIN your pages.

What I DON'T get is why internal linking is viewed by the SE's as significant? Making you more of a resource? At the end of the day, that's what they're trying to find out, I guess...

So as I say, if i ever succeed, it'll be due to Bulldog perseverance. Maybe I should put a pic of a bulldog up, not a cat! lol!

cheers & tks for help and encouragement,

Will
PS I see the spiders are visiting me every 2nd day... nice... also that my ranking on Alexa used to be 5 million something... now 1.8 million... yeah, yeah, I know it's still dismal but I hope to be rapidly closing the gap... lol :-

Will, you have the right idea about the resource page now. Now make it look like the rest of your site.

I know what you mean about being a bulldog. Sometimes I am too much of a bulldog and don't know when to say enuff is enuff!

Hey Moto,

tks ... I wanted to create a different look for the resource area and articles (in fact, ALL the non-home pages) - kinda liked the aqua color, and also quite frankly the idea of doing all the mumbo jumbo again of creating a border and "Push to back" or whatever the wording is...put me off... man... thought I'd keep it simple! LOL!

Anyone else have any comments about the change of aesthetics from home page to Resources => articles? Border and blue to non-border and aqua? It doesn't stick in my craw so I was wondering... :-

A bulldog and enuff is enuff? Ruff, ruff! lol.

cheers

Will

Personally,
The resources pages look non-professional to me as they are now - they don't match the site and appear as I see many do that don't know how to build a site.

And, they don't have a link back to your home page/actual site - which I'd like to see your headline at the top of this page - and the box - and center it.

You made your sales letter look professional - I'd like this to also.

Will, I second everthing Bethers just said. You have the right idea, you just need to complete it. The idea is that you use a template of your main page to create all of the other pages for your site. It is very easy and much faster to just clone your index page. Every page on your site should have links to all of the most important pages on your site using descriptive anchor text.

Decide what pages you want to have for your site (index, contact, about us, resources, testimonials, etc) and place those links on your index page.

Now go up to File>New Page>Clone Page>select your index page. It will come up as index_clone. Delete all of themain page content accept for the header and the links at the bottom of the page. Go into the properties and set your "Author" tag to whatever you want it to say. I resave this page as TEMPLATE (in caps so I can find it easier) Now you have a template for adding new pages to your site and a platform for placing the new articles on. Now every time you add another page or article, you are adding backlinks to your most important site pages.

Take the time to figure out what names of pages you really want to have as the main pages for your site and save them with descriptive keywords. If you plan this out well, you won't need to go back and redo it every couple of weeks. You'll just continute to add pages and your site can grow and become a money making machine!

Here's a good article about use of articles and resources on a site - and how good ones bring you one way inbound links:

Understanding the True Value of a Resource Library for your Site

Then, think about it - because I like this article, I'm linking to it and the site it's on - nice one way link, eh???

Hey Moto & Bethers,

tks - this is what I needed as a kick up the ass to change my site!! lol. But yeah, I now know I need to work at it and do what you say...

I have some questions but it's late here (GMT +2) and I must go beddy byes... lol... but I will post again!

Tks for the article Bethers, had a quick look and yeah - like you say in your seo book: "make your site a gt place for your VISITORS" (or words to that effect, lol)

It strikes me that the Net is just an extension of life... ie the more you give out, the more you get back. If I (or anyone) make my site a GENUINE resource, so that ppl GENUINELY get something out of it, then why shouldnt it rank high? It deserves it!

so lots to work on, lol.

chao and chat soon,

Will

Hey Moto & Bethers,

howz it going? well, finally completed all the redoing of the Resource pages! i've got some 30 pages so it took a while but go check it out pse ... tell me how it looks to you.

I know it needs more internal links but that's the next step ... just wanted it up and running for now ... lol.

One thing that worries me a bit is that when I load/access the Resources page, I see text "below" the other text, which then disappears once the page is loaded. I think this is because I created the template like Moto said, but when I was creating a new page, or taking info from a page that had already been created, I just copied and pasted across. I guess this didn't 'kill' the original material? So it's still visible, at least to the se's, and thus I might get penalized?

I tried to do that thing of sending it to the back, but only succeeded in deleting the text that was on screen (which I was fortunately able to get back by hitting Undo!) Any ideas as to what's going on here, and how to restore this? I don't see the "below text" under any of the other pages except for the actual Resources page. Any ideas?

What I think is a +ve step forward is that there is now more unity in the site. And one can find one's way around no matter what page U R on! At least I hope.

So let me know what U think ... :)

Oh, any ideas as to Alexa rankings? My PR is still O but my Alexa ranking has been falling like a stone ... starting at 5.5 million a few months back at inception, it's now about 380 000! Still way too high but at least it gives me +ve feedback ... lol.

Don't know if I asked about Alexa before ... hope not ... lol.

chao 4 now

Will

Looking good.

When you send something to the back - it doesn't delete it when you can't see it anymore - it disappears behind whatever else is there LOL - so if you send it to the back and can't see it - that's what is happening - just click on what you see then (if it's the shape) and send IT to the back. And if nothing else comes up - then you're ok. But if you do have text hiding behind the shape YES you do need to find and delete it.

LOL the first question on your site threw me for a loop planet777. Since im a guy, i didnt want to look like the big fat guy, but i dont particularly want to look like the slim chick in her underwear either. Is there another option?

Hey Planet777,

The thing with me, I'm one of the examples who scans quickly a web page or document or any readable thing.

The more I read in your article, the more I want to jump to the next line and next paragraph.

What mentioned above is absolutly true, that's why, my website "which will be launch in couple months, contains short lines and short elements with full information and document. expressive images etc etc.

I can't beleive that what I was doing was going in the right track, I will be working faster now because I can't wait to attack the market.

Thank you for the article, it's pretty good.

Hey Bethers, aconstas & Nite,

Bethers - tks - also tks again for all your help - I put a lot of work in and all your guidance plus Moto's has got me on the right track!! I did work out myself what was wrong, and Sent to Back and deleted some pesky html code that was in there ... I had to physically shift the text across and then Send to Back, and THAT exposed the small html box.

Aconstas: yeah - LOL - one of my mates teased me by saying I am implying that my diet will turn the fat guy INTO a nice slim woman ... LOL. I think I need to amend the text to make it a little more explicit that it's about the WEIGHT they are carrying or not carrying, not the gender or whatever ... lol.

Nite: tks for the observations. R U saying I should make the text shorter and punchier? I thought I had done that - lol - guess not? What I cant figure out is that 95% of the ppl who come to the site exit before 30 secs is out! Is the copy THAT boring, or what am I doing wrong? I am working on getting testimonials, but it's not easy. My conversion rate is not high: any ideas as to how I can make this better? Make the copy more "gripping" and sticky?

Anyway, tks for the feedback :-

Cheers

Will

95% (or more) of all traffic leaves- actually usually within the first 5-8 seconds. So don't let that depress you. They are surfing for something in particular - and you don't have it. Now, hopefully you grab the attention of at least a small percentage of those looking for something else and they stay.

What is important is that you have the website optimized and written so the ones who are looking for what you have stay - and not just stay, but stay and order :)

Remember, they say you want a 2% conversion rate - that means 98% of the traffic won't buy - of course, no one will argue when the rate goes higher - but there are some very, very successful sites out there who are working at conversion rates of less than 1%. That will happen when you come up in very general terms - and you'll see more people leave in the first seconds - but if you're pulling the trafffic organically, then it's just gravy - and a numbers game.

Hey Bethers,

tks! I feel better now ... LOLOL. :- No, but really, it's good to know that the successsful sites are also languishing in low single figures when it comes to conversion rates ... I always heard about a 2-5% conversion rate, and of course - lol - thought I could turn that on its head, ha ha! It would be interesting to know WHAT ppl are looking for tho ... most of my current traffic comes from two main sources: 1) a political site, believe it or not - and I've had several sales from it too! The button on the site shows a pair of feet on some scales, with the words "Lose weight at the speed of light!" That sucks in at least 5 or more ppl a day. and the second site is some affilate, but I cant see his original ad! (my Awstats page link only takes me to a general domain link, not his actual ad)

I get about 30 unique visitors a day, want to bump that up but it's a start :-

But my question again is: why do ppl click on a weight loss link if they're not interested in getting more info on it? What ARE they looking for? What I'm saying on the site is that based on ACTUAL experience, this is what worked for me! And should therefore work for anyone who wants to lose weight, since it was dietary-based. Oh well, lol.

Yeah, I can see it's a numbers game, and hopefully my rankings will increase more now... :-

tks and chao 4 now

Will

Originally Posted by planet777

Hey Bethers, aconstas & Nite,

Nite: tks for the observations. R U saying I should make the text shorter and punchier? I thought I had done that - lol - guess not? What I cant figure out is that 95% of the ppl who come to the site exit before 30 secs is out! Is the copy THAT boring, or what am I doing wrong? I am working on getting testimonials, but it's not easy. My conversion rate is not high: any ideas as to how I can make this better? Make the copy more "gripping" and sticky?

Anyway, tks for the feedback :-

Cheers

Will

No I didn't comment about your website, I was talking generaly, but if you want me to give you my thoughts about your site "but don't feel offended"

ok, there is so many marketing website who uses the same layout as your site, the big title of the contents, then the big title for benefits and then people talking about beneficial they got from the product, specialy ME and I'm sure there is many like me, I look at the main subject of the site, and I scroll down to see what you got, if I find something I'm really looking for, I stop and read and maybe get the service I want.

Please don't feel offended, because I always close the websites containing too much text in less than 10 secs.

My suggestion is, AAAALLLLLL that contents you got, spread them by pages, for example : in the home page, describe your product with one paragraph or even 2. + 2 pictures are enough in the home page, another page which has a link in the home page where you put all the beneficial that people are talking about and so on.

I know you want to sell your product, that's why you might go and create a page called "Order Now" or something similar.

I will give you an idea, "normally I shouldn't because that's a plan I want to use : get self advertisement which mean, create a gif or flash banner advertising your product with a promotion or discount, for example : buy today and get bla bla bla (something else) for FREE.... offer limited untill bla bla date or something.

I don't know exactly what your plan is, but this is me, you might be convinced about what you are doing but I'm just explaining what I "no body else" think.

Please don't feel offended, if you don't like my reply, just tell me, I'll make sure to get it deleted.

Cheers Mate.

Producer,
While I agree with you for most sites - for his type site, what he's done has been proven to work - so sometimes you don't want to reinvent the wheel. Now, he could do it the other way - like Paul did for his anxiety site - and it's working also.

I have never quite understood why these one page sales letters like this one work so well, but they do - and are generating big revenue for people.

Hey Nite & Bethers,

tks for the feedback! Nite - no, not offended at all, mate - appreciate the time U took! I want feedback, and any opinion expressed is good.

Tho I do agree, natch, with Bethers - these sites work, as long as the copy's good and there are definite benefits to the product, not to mention demand etc ... I do have a feeling tho that this style has become a bit overdone, there are SO many of these types of sites out there now, that U get a bit overwhelmed with the hype ... I would think that if I had posted this site in 2000 and not 2007 it would have had far more of an impact ... but there U go.

Anyway, tks to all for the input.

Cheers

Will