You’ve got about 50 milliseconds to make a first impression.
In that time, your user’s brain isn't "reading" your site; it’s performing a high-speed ocular scan to see if you’re worth the effort.
If you’re fighting the way the human eye naturally moves, you’re losing.
The F-Pattern: The brain’s default scan
Nielsen Norman Group famously discovered that users read web content in an F-shaped pattern, two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe.
- The top bar: They scan the header (the top bar of the F).
- The middle hook: They drop down a bit and scan another horizontal line.
- The vertical drop: They skim down the left side for keywords or bullet points.
Why your sidebar is a ghost town
Anything on the right-hand side of your page is essentially in the blind spot of the initial scan.
If your CTA is tucked away in a right-hand sidebar, you might as well have written it in invisible ink.
How to design for the F
- Front-load the value: Put your most important keywords and nuggets in the first two paragraphs and on the left-hand side of your bullet points.
- The scanning anchor: Use bold subheads and bulleted lists to give the eye a place to land as it moves down the vertical stem of the F.
- Ditch the fluff: If the first few words of your sentences don't promise value, the user will stop scanning before they even get to the "middle" of your F.
We can't change how we look at things.
We can change our design to match the hardware we're born with.
