Although this question might sound inappropriate and even weird as far as a virtual reality is concerned, scientist have discovered something what can change your perceiving of creating websites!

Through all years of your education you were only taught to read line after line, focusing on every single word, trying to remember details… No one has ever told you how to skip through the text to find what you in fact need or how to pick up information when there is a lot of text everywhere. However, this is an ability which we all posses without learning! And which leads to general conclusions about how people read and perceive.

Have you ever wondered why in most of the articles text is divided into two columns and the abstract is placed on the left side? It has been proven recently that reading a bit of left column is highly more probable than reading even a smaller amount of text when it is stretched between left and right margin. Compressed width of a text cause an impression that there is not so much reading as it seemed to be.

A new method, which allows to follow and record the path where someone was looking on a website, has been invented nowadays. With some help of a thermographic camera and special algorithms designed to determine an exact point where the respondent is looking, experts have designed a scheme where people focus for a longer time.

And these surveys explain clearly why people click on some of the banners and on the others – not. Knowledge about eyetracking is widely used by specialists of e-commerce – putting an advertisement on one side of a website is for sure going to produce more profit than an advert placed somewhere else.

In the end such a pattern of watching a website has been presented:

As you see, the left side of the top of a page is the most important place. This is where logotype and company name are usually placed – everyone visiting a page will notice them and, hopefully, remember.

The next stage is to look on the middle section – what would you put there? Some news? Promotions? Discounts and special offers? Or maybe something you have invented? It is absolutely up to you.

Then nearly all the people focus their attention to the left side of a page, where they suppose menu would be found. Intuitive words on menu buttons can make them click and stay at your website for a longer time.

If those three elements do not attract a visitor’s attention, it is increasingly probable that he or she would simply close your page without any doubts or hesitation. The rest of the presented path is followed only by a small number of visitors – in comparison with the first three steps. Therefore we do our bests to ensure that these elements, together with a general impression of a website design catch people’s eyes.

Imagine almost all of the visitors sitting glued to their computer’s screens, reading all compellingly written information (which is, of course, very easy to find), holding their breath in amazement – everything because of your website! Sounds incredible? As long as a page is well designed, planned carefully and the rules of eyetrackinng are taken into account – nothing is impossible, especially for us!