The New Washington Post Homepage Design -- an Eyetools Eyetracking Analysis
Eyetools Heatmap of people reading
the new Washington Post homepage
(launched
February 15, 2005)
The Washington Post announced a new homepage, and here is the data showing how it performs: an Eyetools Heatmap of a group of 19 new visitors viewing the new page; along with what we can learn from its design.
Fast summary:
- Top half of page — good readable design.
- Bottom half of page — bad example of line-spacing and white-space discourages reading.
Note: This entry is not an exhaustive report, instead it's a quick sample of things! Despite that, this entry is still too long by most weblog standards — there's always so much to be said about the data... alas.
Learn from Washington Post's successes
- Main content area — good readable design. It is heavily viewed and read (more so than some other news sites). Good use of line-spacing and white-space. People even scroll. Job well done!
Learn from Washington Post's mistakes
-
Bottom half of page — ineffective line-height spacing and lack of white-space reduce reading. Most of the content is being missed and there is no consistent guidance of eyes to section headings.
Opportunities to communicate value to visitors is greatly reduced in this area. We've seen other websites do a better job.
Advertising
The ads changed for each person, so numbers are averaged and are not tied to specific creatives. The numbers reported are pretty typical, in our experience, for sites of this kind. It's worth noting that we measure what is happening with advertising and photos with statistics rather than relying on the heatmap (email me if you want to know why, and maybe I'll write-up an entry about it).
Clearly there is a more we could say about advertising effectiveness, but not today — the main point of this entry is about design.
A final note about this type of research
Getting this type of data isn't difficult or expensive. Giving direct visual eyetracking feedback to designers is a great thing because it completes the creative design loop — designers already utilize visual design, fonts, background colors, and spacing with the intention of effectively guiding visitors' eyes, and eyetracking data introduces feedback into that system.