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A few years ago, I had a discussion with the editor of a national
newspaper, who told me that there is a science to the layout patterns of
the newspaper industry...that the most important feature/photos get
assigned top right hand corner, importance runs right to left, top to
bottom, and front to back. The discussion peaked my interest, and I
went looking for similar wisdoms for graphic design and Web sites.
I found a study by a midwestern university that tested ad banners and
eye patterns, and found that banners at the top of pages don't get read,
but banners one-third down do! The study also found that indexes down
the left side had better response rates than top indexes or right ones
despite the right scroll buttons! As I remember it, the sample size was
about 1400 users.
There were lots of cool pieces of info in that study, most of which was
posted to the university web site.
It's been about 4 years, so I may have some difficulty resurrecting that
URL. However, Jeff Hanvey may have it in his bibliography!
--
Annamaria Profit
E-mail: inteltek -at- erols -dot- com
URL:http://www.erols.com/inteltek
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"The world we have created today...
has problems which cannot be solved
by thinking the way we thought when
we created them."
...............................Albert Einstein
