building website, creating a website, design, Design tips, designing UX, designing web pages, google web designer, internet design, reading online, scan reading, web design, web design company, web designer, web page design, website builder, website design
How To Make Your Designs Scannable (And Why You Should)
Jakob Nielsen’s How Users Read on the Web is 25 years old this week, and one glance at an eye-tracking study will tell you its key observations are still relevant today.
Simply put, users don’t read a web page; they scan it for individual words and sentences.
A typical pattern shown in eye-tracking reports is that users will rapidly scan a page, scrolling down to do so. Then either hit the back button and pump your bounce rate, or scroll to the top and re-engage with the content.
Even when content, volume, and quality tick all the user’s boxes, and they choose to stay on your site, they still don’t read; they scan; a slightly deeper scan, but still a scan.
As a result, it’s vital to design websites to be easily scannable, both in a split-second scan to decide if your page is worth the read...
