Sticky Content | Digital copywriting

Apart from all the good stuff on web writing in Hoa Loranger's session at  Nielsen/Norman Group's Usability Week, it was good to be reminded of just how clear and dominant users' scan-reading behaviour is by seeing a few videos of eyetracking sessions.

Again and again we saw readers visit a page and read headings and links, headings and links – sometimes giving a page 2 or 3 scans and looking at nothing but these navigational elements before focusing on a particular area and choosing to read the text.

We've been teaching people about scan-reading for years, but it can be easy to assume that it's a question of emphasis – that people focus slightly more on headings than they do in print, or that links are useful aids for page navigation.

In fact, scan-reading is the only game in town. If you still think meaningful headings and link text, short paragraphs and clear calls to action are optional extras – or you need to convince someone who does – you could do worse than spend some time with the clips below...

John Lewis clothing product pages, from Simple Usability:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqx_Kr3ovZA&feature=related

Search results page, from Google:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w29DrEEsqT4&feature=player_embedded

Apple product demo pages, from Visiontrack Research:

News pages, from the Poynter Institute

Read more about eyetracking in Nielsen Norman Group's book on the subject, Eyetracking Web Usability.