Posted by on June 12, 2007

Remember how I said people look to the upper left? If youve been centering your headlines and subheadings, do you still think thats a good idea? Well, its not. Yeah, I know newspapers, magazines and books do it. So do lots of other sites. But thats just not where people want to look first.
Theyve tested this. Believe it or not, about 10-20 percent of people just literally do not see centered headlines, particularly if theyre in a hurry (and who isnt these days?) They look in the top left hand corner of the content. And when they do, they see empty space, because the centered headline starts off to the right.
So what do they do? Instead of scanning right, they move their eyes down. And they miss the headlines.
Centered headlines are wasted headlines. If you center them, youve hidden them from 10-20% of your readers. Might as well not have them at all. And dont even think about right-justifying them.
Just left-justify them and dont ever worry about it again!
A word about tables: the ideal table for online is short, narrow, and only used for data. When a table is too wide or too long, part of it is out of the readers natural field of vision. When they scan fast, they wont see all of it.

Posted in: Internet Marketing