This is an old story*, but it is an Eyetools favorites because it illustrates an important point:

We eyetracked E*Trade's homepage and then inserted gibberish into it to illustrate that content in a "visual dead zone" doesn't get read and might as well not exist.

To identify parts of E*Trade's homepage that weren't being viewed, we collected eyetrack data as people surfed E*Trade's website to decide for themselves whether they wanted to sign up for E*Trade's services. We found that about 1/5 of the screen real estate above the fold was being wasted, so once we located un-viewed areas, we came up with gibberish to replace the existing text on a cached version of their homepage (this was a lot of fun!).

Examples of the gibberish tested on E*Trade's homepage:

• FDIC distrusts us * No Bank Quality * Will Lose Value
• Not ready to event an insurance? Tax group of our manager discussion free of funds.
• Get $25 to close an E*Trade Bank Money Market Plus Advice! Tax a gear cool and ATM access!
• ...and more

Then, we re-tested the modified homepage in the lab. As a secondary test, we also sent it out to a large group of people who we didn't eyetrack. After people had seen the page, while evaluating whether they were interested in signing up for E*Trade's services, we asked them if there was anything strange about the homepage. Only 1 in 25 people noticed!

The moral of the story is this, if you wish to optimize your content:

1. People can't click on, or buy, what they don't see.
2. If content on your webpage is in a visual dead zone, it might as well not exist.
3. Changes made to text in visual dead zones will have little impact.
4. If the copy is critical, then visual dead zones need to be fixed before copy changes are considered.
5. If the copy is non-critical, simply removing the copy is often (though not always) a solution.

* This is an old E*Trade website -- we ran this test in January 2001. Since then, E*Trade has become a client and changed their website.