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Visual Communication

Less Than a Second

·6 min in full, in the book·PagePerfect Journal

Also available as a typeset book

A headline is meant to be the part of a page that more people look at than any other, and the length of that look has been measured. In 2004 Poynter’s Eyetrack III watched 46 people read mock news websites.1 The average look at a headline lasted under a second, and readers often took in only its opening words.1 A bigger number circulates with less behind it, 80 per cent of potential readers deciding at the headline, and it most likely began as a line about how an advertising budget is spent.2 Much of the advice that travels with it comes from sources that were not about headlines.

The rest of this essay is in the book

It goes on to cover:

  • Where a reader starts on a page
  • The five-to-one average
  • The witness who changed sides
  • Tim Brown’s ladder
  • The numbers came from a 1996 web standard
  • The part that gets read

About the book

Notes

  1. Outing 2004, Homepage layout, entry points and dominant headlines; “Want people to read, not scan? Consider small type”; partial viewing of headlines and blurbs; the caveats in the introduction; Outing 2004, Sections on homepage entry points and article pages. One industry eye-tracking study, not refereed: 46 participants in San Francisco reading mock news websites built for the test, with the report calling its results preliminary and warning against extrapolating them to a larger population. Controlled findings and looser observations are reported side by side. Every result in it comes from a screen; none was run on a printed book page. Evidence B: one credible study, or evidence with limits.
  2. Ogilvy 1963, ch. 6, pp. 103–104: eighty cents of the dollar spent once the headline is written; Ogilvy 1983, ch. 7, headlines section: 90 per cent of the money wasted if the headline does not sell. Both figures are about a budget rather than about readers. Nothing in this registry reports that 80 per cent of readers decide at the headline, and the number in the old text is the money metaphor read as a readership figure. Evidence C: professional practice or tradition.

Sources

  • Outing, S. (2004). Eyetrack III: What News Websites Look Like Through Readers' Eyes. The Poynter Institute, 24 August 2004. poynter.org
  • Outing, S. (2004). Eyetrack III: What news websites look like through readers' eyes. Poynter Institute. poynter.org
  • Ogilvy, D. (1963). Confessions of an Advertising Man. New York: Atheneum. openlibrary.org
  • Ogilvy, D. (1983). Ogilvy on Advertising. New York: Crown. Also checked in the 1985 Vintage reprint (index page numbers identical). openlibrary.org

Further reading