Jakob Nielsen looks at user viewing patterns along the horizontal dimension and finds web users spend 69% of their time viewing the left half of the page and 30% viewing the right half. A conventional layout is thus more likely to make sites profitable.
People look at information above the fold far more than they do at information further down the page.
He looks at user viewing patterns along the horizontal dimension:
In this chart, each bar shows the amount of time users spent on fixations within a 100-pixel-wide stripe running down the screen, starting from the very left.
People spent more than twice as much time looking at the left side of the page as they did the right:
- Left half of screen: 69% of viewing time
- Right half of screen: 30% of viewing time
The remaining 1% of viewing time was spent to the right of the initially-visible 1,024 pixels. Such information is visible only after horizontal scrolling, and the minute amount of attention it attracts confirms the guideline to avoid horizontal scrolling. Read more.
He concludes: Stick to the conventional layout, because it works perfectly with how people look at Web pages:
- Keep navigation all the way to the left. This is where people look to find a list of current options.
- Keep the main content a bit further in from the left.
- The most important stuff should be showcased between one-third and halfway across the page. This is where users focus their attention the most.
- Keep secondary content to the right. It won’t be seen as much here, but that’s okay — not everything can get top billing, and you need a place to put less-important material.
