Eyetrack: Getting them to notice

Nora Paul of the Institute for New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota, gave a detailed report on her research on how online users find material and decide when to click through.
This illustrates one of many design challenges:
100 people see a page
50 people actually notice a specific item
25 people take it a step further and “parse” it, or read the headline and the blurb
12.5 people take the next step, evaluating whether it’s worth more time
6.25 actually click through

With that kind of attrition, you can see why good design is imperative. Paul says the place where design have the most impact in engaging users to go farther users is between “See” and “Notice.” Her research considers who different navigational markers for updates, links and photo galleries can keep users on site longer.

Here’s Paul’s presentation.

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