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Much like navigating ice floes in the Arctic circle, designing a website can be hard work. Aside from the coding, the content and the time commitment, actually working out where everything should go is an absolute pain. How big should the logo be? Where should our comment box go? Luckily there is some method to the madness, and it’s not so maddening to work out.

Various wizz boffins at various clever colleges spend a lot of time tracking eyeballs to work out what people look at on a webpage and for how long and whilst you could read more about it here, there aren’t any pictures of polar bears on their site.

What?

Interestingly the research from Missouri S&T showed that the longest time was spent looking at the logo on the webpage at 6.48 seconds. Now whilst this doesn’t sound a lot, given that the average time recorded for sections of the webpage was 180 milliseconds, it tells a lot about the importance of the logo. Furthermore the study states that “the use of social media links may be of particular interest for college students, more so than for the general population” highlighting the need to tailor to your audience.

Where?

There are three main views as to designing the layout of websites:

The F Pattern - As the name suggests, this study by the Nielsen Norman Group proposes that people will look at content in an F shape, giving prominence to the left hand side of the page and the top section.

The Z Pattern –  Again as the name suggests, this says that people look at the page in a Z shape. This idea gives prominence to the top. There’s a lovely article explaining more on tutsplus

The Gutenberg Diagram - Unfortunately this one doesn’t have a self explanatory name but essentially proposes that people will go from the top left corner to the bottom right, more can be found in this lovely article.

Whilst all these different viewpoints originate from different areas, the common theme throughout points to the top left as being your most valuable bit of web real estate.

But how?

There are a myriad of ways to go about this but like most things, simple is best. Here are our top three tips for keeping it simple:

1. What is your website for?

Is your website offering online sales or information about your brand or both? Is this obvious from the first impression of your website? Having clear and obvious motives towards your customers makes them happy (and also lowers bounce rates if you’re delving into the world of PPC).

2. Customer journey

As much as you will want to cram all that lovely juicy marketing material on the front page it is important to remain calm and breathe. Spreading the content out across relevant pages can create a story that the customer can use to create a journey through your website.

3. Err…hello?

Whether you use social media, email or snail mail to keep in contact with your customers, make sure you let them know. Use your website as an extension of your CRM system and let people know that you’re there!

WARNING: This is an extremely condensed version of the subject, but hopefully has highlighted some points of interest for you. If you want to spend more time discussing F vs Z or want to channel some our web brillance – let us know!