<h1>F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content</h1>
<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 221);">
<strong>Summary:</strong>
<br>
Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe.
</blockquote>
<p>
F for <em>fast</em>. That's how users read your precious content. In a few seconds, their eyes move at amazing speeds across your website’s words in a pattern that's very different from what you learned in school.
</p><p>
In our new <a href="http://www.useit.com/eyetracking/" title="Overview of study findings" class="new">eyetracking study</a>, we recorded how 232 users looked at thousands of Web pages. We found that users' main reading behavior was fairly consistent across many different sites and tasks. This <strong>dominant reading pattern</strong> looks somewhat like an F and has the following three components:
</p><ul>
<li>Users first read in a <strong>horizontal movement</strong>, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F's top bar.
</li><li>Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a <strong>second horizontal movement</strong> that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F's lower bar.
</li><li>Finally, users scan the content's left side in a <strong>vertical movement</strong>. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F's stem.
</li></ul>
