Grabbing a Visitors Attention

Over the weekend, I did a special promotion for my favorite webmaster forum, and did a bunch of my Basic Usability and Design Analysis. I found a common theme for many of the sites. The theme was YELLING.

I made a post last week about the use of bold as emphasis. The bottom line of that article, restrain from over using it. When I accuse a site of yelling at me, it is because there are several key points that the webmaster has made on one page. All are clearly yelling out “Look at Me” because they use bold, red text, or a combination of things. If enough of these points are yelling out on one page, not one will appear the likely target, and the emphasis will be lost. The visitor will be lost as well. Here is a simple example.

Which test word has more emphasis?

Word1 | Word2 | Word3 | Word4 | Word5

Difficult to tell at best. If the point of page was to sell Word3, good luck. There is a 1 in 5 chance it will get clicked. Lets try the test again trying to sell Word3.

Which test word has more emphasis?

Word1 | Word2 | Word3 | Word4 | Word5

Pretty obvious where to look now. When using emphasis, or when you are getting ready to tell at a visitor what to do, don’t confuse them. Make your message clear, and let them know where to click. The key is to stay focused on the purpose of that specific page.