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Comparing Compact & Extended News
Homepages
Look around the Web these days and you'll see many news websites
that have homepages containing lots and lots of links and
content (we refer to them in this article as "extended").
Sites like WashingtonPost.com
and LATimes.com, for
instance, typically have well over a hundred links, and all
sorts of photos, charts, and ads.
EYETRACK III FINDINGS
This report is one of many from the Eyetrack
III study of broadband-era news websites.
46 people were tested for one hour
each in December 2003 by Eyetools
Inc. in partnership with the Poynter
Institute and the Estlow
Center. During the test period, each test subject viewed
mock news websites created for research purposes and real-world
multimedia news features. Results were published in September
2004.
Less common are news websites with fewer links that require
little or no scrolling to see the full content of the page
(we refer to them as "compact") -- for example,
Observer-Reporter.com
and CJOnline.com.
It probably makes sense to position yourself on the compact-extended
continuum based on your audience's needs.
In Eyetrack III we tested two similarly designed homepages:
one compact (homepage No. 2, below) that fits on a screen
with no scrolling required, and the other (homepage No. 7)
an extended page. Click the thumbnails below for enlarged
views.
Here's what we observed.
Finding: Adding more content to make a longer, extended
page did not affect viewing of editorial page elements "above
the fold."
With the extended
homepage that had content going beyond the first screen,
we found no difference in viewing behavior on editorial content
on the top part of the page. What we saw on the top portion
of the extended page was similar to what we saw with the compact
page (all of which was visible without scrolling).
One major difference was in use of the horizontal navigation
bar on these two pages. Viewers of the compact page used 30
percent of their clicks on the navigation, while only 3 percent
of clicks for viewers of the extended page. (Half of our test
group saw the compact homepage; the other half saw the extended
page.) That makes sense; with fewer options on the compact
page, you'd expect the navigation to play a more important
role in guiding people to inside content.
In terms of people viewing the navigation at least once (even
if for a short period), it was close for both: 80 percent
of the compact-page viewers saw the navigation; 87 percent
of the extended-page viewers saw it. (The difference between
those figures is not statistically significant, however.)
On the extended page, the navigation bar was the second-most
viewed page component, following the topmost headline. On
the compact page, four items were seen by more people than
the navigation bar: the right-column ads, the page flag/masthead,
and headline/blurb combos No. 1 and 2.
Another major difference in how the compact page differed
from the extended page was in the amount of viewing participants
gave the advertising on the right. In the same way that the
reduced options appeared to drive users to the navigation
bar, so too did the reduced options drive participants to
look at the advertising on the right.
Since so many news homepages extend well below the first
screen (requiring scrolling), it's encouraging to see that
on the extended test homepage, nearly 60 percent of participants
did view at least some headlines "below the fold."
You can see some of the behaviors described above by looking
at the heatmaps
of homepages No. 2 (compact) and No. 7 (extended) below.
(A heatmap is an aggregate image showing overall eye activity
on a webpage. Red-orange areas indicate the most eye activity,
blue-black the least.) Click images to enlarge.
Finding: When more choices are available on a homepage,
people still tend to consume the top portion of the page first.
When test participants looked at the extended page (No. 7),
they still tended to review the top portion of the homepage
first before moving on to the bottom section. In this particular
design, a weather feature served to split the homepage into
distinct sections, but when viewing the page initially, the
bottom section was visible -- so participants would have been
able to realize that there was more to the page.
Most people moved their gaze and attention around the top
part of the page first, then later moved down the page. You
can see this by looking at the average viewing sequence graphic
for the extended page (No. 7) below. (The graphic shows the
order in which parts of the page -- what the researchers term
"zones of interest" -- are viewed on average by
all the people who viewed this particular page.)
Below is the average viewing sequence graphic for the compact
homepage, No. 2. You can see how people tend to bounce around
the page.
Finding: Headlines placed "below the fold" deliver
additional content without penalty to performance of the upper
part of the page.
In looking at statistics for viewing headlines on the top
of both pages, we see that the numbers are fairly consistent
for both groups (compact-page viewers and extended-page viewers).
If you look at statistics for headlines further down the extended
page, they typically fall in the 30-45 percent range.
The extended-page viewers focused on a larger number of headlines
than the group viewing the compact page. So, even though much
of the viewing of the extended page was up top, plenty of
people also explored down the page (about 87 percent).
The chart below shows the percentage of people who looked
at or saw the various components of the compact and extended
homepages. Blank cells in the spreadsheet are there because
the compact homepage did not contain some elements that the
extended page contained.
Tips
Here are some tips based on what we found in this part of
the research:
- On a compact page, navigation is used more. On an extended
homepage, the navigation is likely to be used less, so be
sure there are content links on the homepage to areas of
the site you want people to visit.
- By removing content from the homepage and making it compact,
you can change user behavior relative to how the user navigates
the site as a whole -- from one of grazing content in the
homepage text to find a link to click, to one of using the
navigation to dive into the site for more content.
- By limiting the amount of content on a homepage, you can
drive viewing to advertising on the page (presuming, of
course, that the ad is positioned effectively), the researchers
suggest.
- The research indicates that people view the top part of
a news site's homepage first (predictably). Participants
did read headlines "below the fold," though, which
is good news for most websites, since very few restrict
the length of their homepages to the first visible screen.
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