Make Prices, Numbers, and Contact Details Easy to Spot
When people look for something specific on a page, their eyes skip the body text and jump to elements that stand out: links, bold words, color, digits, and capital letters, or words that match what they are looking for. Nielsen Norman Group calls this spotted scanning (Nielsen Norman Group, 2017).
What the research observed
Eye-tracking heat maps of spotted scanning show scattered hot points on numbers, links, and bold text, with little continuous reading between them. The visitor has a target in mind, such as a price, a phone number, or a product name, and searches for anything that looks like it (Nielsen Norman Group, 2019).
This works when the page cooperates. A price set in bold digits is found in a moment. The same price spelled out mid-paragraph blends in, and the visitor may miss it or give up.
What it means for a business website
Many visits to a small business site are hunts for one fact. Is this service available in my area? What does it cost? What are the hours? How do I reach someone? Those details are often buried in paragraphs or placed at the bottom of the page in small gray text.
Formatting those details so they stand out, and placing them early, lets a visitor get the answer and move on to contacting you. Writing numbers as digits, setting prices in bold, and using descriptive link text all help. A link labeled “click here” gives a spotted scanner nothing to catch (Nielsen Norman Group, 2017).
What to do
- List the three or four facts visitors most often call or email to ask about, and make each one visually distinct on the page.
- Write prices, phone numbers, and quantities as digits, not words.
- Put contact details and hours near the top of the page as well as in the footer.
- Use bold sparingly so the important items still stand out.
Sources
- Pernice. F-Shaped Pattern of Reading: Misunderstood, But Still Relevant. Nielsen Norman Group, 2017.
- Pernice. Text Scanning Patterns: Eyetracking Evidence. Nielsen Norman Group, 2019.