Try this: visit a Web page or two (ones you don’t regularly visit) and pay attention to the first thing you see on the page. I’ll bet it’s just above the center of the screen. ‘Course, if you’re on a slow modem, you’ll be looking at whatever loads first — unless you’re like me, and you get several windows open so you can read one while the other is loading.
Now notice what you see next on that page. If there’s a strong graphic that’s not in the center of the page and not in a corner, I’ll bet your eye slides to that. If not, you’ll go downward and to the left.
Traditional communication wisdom has it that people read left to right, top to bottom. So you put the most important stuff in the upper left, right? So that it gets seen first? But on Web pages, your eye starts somewhere in the screen center and may not go either left-to-right or top-to-bottom.
If you’re designing or laying out Web pages, be aware of that fact. Got something critical that you want users to see? Put it in the middle of the page. And for goodness’ sake, don’t let strong graphics pull the reader’s eye away from your important stuff.
