What parts of Web pages typically get the most (and least) attention?

Eye-tracking systems use cameras and infrared beams to determine where people look when sitting in front of a computer. Several researchers have used this technology to determine what parts of Web pages and blogs are of most interest to readers. In other words, science tells us what parts of Web pages typically get the most (and least) attention. Based on their research, Eyetools, Inc. has created a diagram that shows general viewer “priority zones” for a single screenful of Web page information. The darkest boxes shown in Figure 4.9 are the areas that receive the most attention.

Clearly, the upper-left part of the page is where you should put items you want people to notice most, and the lower-right part is where the least critical information should go. Items that fall below this full-screen area and require scrolling are those that are the least important.

For example, if the main goal of your blog is to increase sales of a specific product, you’d want to put information about that product in the upper-left corner with a link to buy.

While given enough effort and custom code, you can pretty much put anything anywhere on a page; 99.9 percent of blogs have a banner area at the top of every page identifying and describing the site.

Repositioning or eliminating that banner is usually not something people want to do, and hosted blog software programs don’t make it easy to move or get rid of it. For these reasons, we will assume that any blog you’ll do will have an identifying banner at the top of every page.

Source: “Publish and Prosper: Blogging for Your Business” By DL Byron, Steve Broback