User behaviour – making sites more effective

In order to create an effective and user-friendly website, a site’s design is just as important as its development.  We’ve found a couple of interesting articles on our old friend, Jakob Nielsen’s website regarding user behaviour and how website designs should cater to it:

Keep key messages ‘left’ of screen
Web users spend 70% 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. View full report

Keep key messages ‘above the fold’
Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. Although users do scroll, they allocate only 20% of their attention below the fold. View full report