I saw an article on ProBlogger today that really caught my attention. The article pointed out some of the more interesting findings of a study from Eyetrack III. Here are the points that ProBlogger singled out from the findings:

1. “Dominant headlines most often draw the eye first upon entering the page”
2. “Smaller type encourages focused viewing behavior…. larger type promotes lighter scanning”
3. “a headline has less than a second of a site visitor’s attention”
4. “For headlines — especially longer ones — it would appear that the first couple of words need to be real attention-grabbers”
5. “Navigation placed at the top of a homepage performed best”
6. “Shorter paragraphs performed better in Eyetrack III research than longer ones.”
7. “We found that ads in the top and left portions of a homepage received the most eye fixations”
8. “Size matters. Bigger ads had a better chance of being seen”
9. “Close proximity to popular editorial content really helped ads get seen”
10. “the bigger the image, the more time people took to look at it.”
11. “Our research also shows that clean, clear faces in images attract more eye fixations on homepages”

I think that these findings can be very helpful to you. You can improve your online writing by giving you something to focus on when you are developing content. Creating smaller paragraphs and attention-getting headlines are more likely to encourage readers to visit your Web site. If you are interested in drawing ad revenue, the information about ad placement and size can also be very helpful.

This information is not just for bloggers and professional writers. You can use the information for online copy and product descriptions on your home business Web site.