I wouldn’t be surprised if this technique suggested by Joseph Carrabis of NextStage Analytics doesn’t become a standard way of increasing traffic to web sites. I didn’t excerpt all the tips, so if you worry about web site traffic, click and read the whole article, like the hungry peasant you are.

Link: iMediaConnection: Usability Studies 101: The Hungry Peasant.

Many studies have been done which show how people visually scan for information. One of the best can be found in the April 22, 2005 issue of Science. This article and the information behind it cover visual search and the reasons it occurs the way it does. In short, people scan in a clockwise fashion with the eyes starting at "10 o’clock" and then going through two, five, six, eight, nine and back to 10. This scanning is a quick pass to find visual cues. Literally, people have an "idea" of what they’re looking for and are doing pattern matching to find it (and what this means for search landing pages will be in a future column).

The Hungry Peasant knows that the highest visual yield will be at "10 o’clock" because the eye lands there twice before the mind catches on and says, "Hey, that looks interesting, let’s look at that." The Hungry Peasant also knows that what he puts at 10 o’clock has got to be stimulating enough to get you to slow down but not so stimulating as to make you stop. He wants you to walk through his field and get the lay of the land, to get an idea of what else he’s offering, not get caught up in one thing and stop navigating the site.