Getting Noticed
Is your important criteria really being seen?

I was reading an interesting study done on advertising observations the other day and was prompted to share some of the data compiled by Eyetrack III in their study as it applies to general page layout.

First, let me tell you about the study. Eyetrack III is an online news consumer behavior firm that performs studies on how Internet users "see" advertising (if they see it at all). The study that I just read can be viewed in its entirety here. The synopsis of their findings appears to be that the more you try to draw attention to an ad, the more apt the Internet user is to ignore it. This study concluded that plain text ads outperformed graphic ads and that certain placement of ads drew more attention than others.

Applying these findings to your Web site
That study got me thinking about Web page design. So often we hear from clients, "Can you make that bigger, bolder, brighter?" What they seem to be forgetting is that small can draw attention, too.

Let's take a very generic example. Imagine a large, green meadow in front of you. It's all green except for one spec of white somewhere out in the middle. The speck is not big enough to tell you what it is, so you have to walk towards the white speck, focusing on it until you can identify it as a daisy. Now, if that daisy had been a large sunflower, you wouldn't have had to enter the meadow at all, would you? You would know instantly that it's a sunflower, no need to investigate further.

Sometimes you need to draw a site visitor in, not blast old clichés at him. Now some might argue that it was the high contrast of the white daisy that allowed you to notice it and that would be true. The sunflower, however, would also have a high contrast of bright yellow against the green meadow so the daisy had no real advantage to being noticed except that you had to look at it more closely to identify it. (you're scrutinizing this paragraph, aren't you?)

Advertising that doesn't look like advertising
Not surprisingly it seems that we have been programmed to ignore advertising when it is obvious. I guess years of having commercials blasted at us have caused us to become somewhat blind and deaf to their message. This is even more true on the Internet where your audience is not a captive one and you are always just one click away from losing that visitor.

I was on a plane back in July and, thumbing through the standard airline magazines in the seats, I found myself reading an "article" about a matchmaker. The article had a picture of a very nicely dressed woman and was just one full page. I can't remember what the headline was, but I do remember thinking, "how did this lady get them to do an article about her?" She was a matchmaker charging in the range of $60,000 per client to find them a soul mate.

Eventually I noticed the small type at the very bottom of the page "ADVERTISEMENT." I couldn't help but laugh. I had just read what I thought was an article about a subject that I actually have no interest in since I already have my soul mate! But consider the alternative...

This lady could have bought a one page ad (which she did) and put a big picture of a loving couple on it with a minimum amount of text telling them to "Call Susie" to meet your life partner. Would that have been more effective? I don't think so. I would have known instantly that it was an ad and skipped right over it. Presenting it as an article, however, caused me to read it even if it was only to kill time. She now had a chance to present her entire sales pitch in such a way that you weren't aware that you were being pitched. Shrewd, very shrewd.

My point for this article is that big isn't always better and loud isn't always heard. When planning your Web site, you might want to plan it more like you would a novel. Draw the site visitor into your site, make it intriguing, make it interesting, and informative and let the visitor sell himself.