1. Users concentrates on faces
People instinctively notice other people. The same occurs on web pages, users focus their attention on somebody’s face and eyes. So web developers and designers have a good tool to manage users’ attention. Moreover they also can take into account that people usually start to look in the same direction, following photomodel’s look.
Temperature map that shown quantity of users looking at an image with a child who looks at them.
And now he is looking at the content. Pay your attention to the increase in the number of people who read the title and the text.
2. Most of users do not see advertising
Jakob Nielsen says that most of people do not see ads. Looking for some information or focusing on site content, they simply do not pay any attention to banners. It means that users also avoid anything that looks like an advertisement, even if it is not an ads actually. Some menu items may look like banners, so website designers should be careful creating such elements.
Square banners on the left side of the FlashDen site are not banners: they link to content on the same site. But they may be ignored by some users.
However, advertising that looks like content, can be visited by people who are looking for this very information. It can bring more revenue from advertising, but also can reduce level of visitors’ trust because they will click on a banner thinking it’ just a reference to required material on the site. So consider what will be better for you: short-term gain or long-term trust.
Tags: usability, Web development, website design