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Gaze patterns users commonly exhibit and accommodating these behaviors F-pattern Layer Cake Pattern Bypassing Pattern Spotted Pattern Commitment Pattern Scanning vs. reading, why people do it, and how to drive user behavior with your design

Kick effect: People look at the last result on a SERP before leaving the page. (The tenth organic result, on a page of 10 results, is the lowest result looked at in 12% of cases versus 7% combined for the seventh, eighth, and ninth results. In 59% of cases people looked no farther than the third organic result.)

Other patterns such as skipping, backtracking, love at first sight, zigzag, re-acclimating, and bypassing

In print design, we’re told that serif fonts are considered the most readable. The serifs purportedly serve as aids to the eye, moving you from one letter to the next in a smoother fashion.

The bottom line is that the fewer details a font needs to convey a character clearly, the more readable it will appear on a broader range of screens.

the current consensus–at least as close as anyone can get to one–is that sans-serif fonts are still superior for screen body text, and serif fonts are best used for headings. For many users with newer displays, though, the difference is negligible.

Recent research suggests that emotions hold the secret to viral web content. Articles, posts, or videos that evoke positive emotions have greater viral potential than something that evokes negative feelings, but both do a better job recruiting clicks than neutral content. The finer details tell a similar story: triggering high-arousal emotions, such as anger or humor, is a surer path to click gold than triggering low-arousal ones, such as contentment or sadness.

positive emotions best negative ones, any emotion bests none at all.

content evoking high-arousal emotions (in this case, awe, anger, and anxiety, emotions that tend to whip us into action) went viral more often than articles evoking a low-arousal emotion (sadness, an emotion that often leaves us subdued).

According to a new poll of U.S. marketers conducted by Gartner, corporate websites are ranked as the top digital activity for marketing “success” — beating marketing on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Social media marketing, however, ranked as the next most important activity, equal in importance to online advertising.

The survey, conducted in November and December of 2012, polled a relatively small sample of 250+ marketers from U.S.-based companies with more than $500 million in annual revenue

Design, development and maintenance of the corporate website was cited by 45% of survey respondents as contributing to marketing success, with marketing on social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter cited by 43%. Digital/online advertising was also cited by 43%

A recent study (PDF) found that more than 80% of people are disappointed with the experience of browsing Web on mobile devices and would use their smartphones more if the browsing experience improved.

A recent study (PDF) found that more than 80% of people are disappointed with the experience of browsing Web on mobile devices and would use their smartphones more if the browsing experience improved.

64% of smartphone users expect websites to load in 4 seconds or less, while the average website takes more than twice that amount, at 9 seconds.

Facebook has created a new way for businesses and developers to target ads to users who have taken an action on Facebook or in an app within a more specific time range. Using the “action spec” targeting capability, which allows advertisers to reach users by the actions they take in Open Graph apps and on Facebook directly, an advertiser could designate a time range shorter than 14 days

a local business might want to reach users who checked into their store within the past week. A developer might want to target users who installed their app in the past three days. A page owner might want to retarget users who viewed one of their page tabs the day before.

Action spec targeting is still a beta feature limited to advertisers working with Preferred Marketing Developers

Tumblr blogs tend to lack the glossy, professional, high-minded design of other social networking sites, including the behemoth that is Facebook and the SMS-inspired Twitter. If anything, these teenaged Tumblrs harken back to earlier web days where users built their own pages on AngelFire and Geocities, with atrocious backgrounds, upgraded cursors, and dancing GIF images galore. GIFs, in fact, are so hugely popular on Tumblr that the company even began experimenting with GIF-based ads.

According to Pew Internet’s study from earlier this year, 13 percent of Internet users ages 18-29 use Tumblr, while only 5 percent of those 30-49 do, 3 percent of those 50-64

Demographic data from Quantcast further drives home just how youthful a site Tumblr has become. 21 percent of its audience is under 18, 30 percent is 18 to 24, and 22 percent is 25 to 34

The optimal line length for your body text is considered to be 50-60 characters per line, including spaces (“Typographie”, E. Ruder). Other sources suggest that up to 75 characters is acceptable.

In order to avoid the drawbacks of too long and too short lines, but still energize your readers and keep them engaged, we suggest keeping it within the range of 50-75 characters per line.

The optimal line length for your body text is considered to be 50-60 characters per line, including spaces (“Typographie”, E. Ruder). Other sources suggest that up to 75 characters is acceptable.

Page post link ads delivered a 53 percent ROI. Page post photo ads delivered a 24 percent ROI. Page post ad units delivered an ROI 26 times higher than right-hand-side ad units. Page post photo ads delivered a 37 percent higher click-through rate than page post link ads and 20 times the CTR of right-hand-side ads. The cost per click for page post photo ads was 17 percent lower than the CPC for page post link ads and right-hand-side ads. Page post link ads delivered a 30 percent higher action rate than page post photo ads, as well as a 55 percent higher rate of purchasing users (the rate of purchasing users were 61 percent higher than for right-hand-side ads).

Page post link ads typically perform well for lead-generation campaigns and are effective in converting users off site. Page post photo ads are designed to capture attention with larger, more engaging photos, creating a seamless experience between paid, owned and earned media. Our study shows that this ad format demonstrated a higher CTR at a lower CPC resulting in a higher ROI than ads on the right-hand side.

Companies currently spend 8.4% of their marketing budgets on social media, and that’s expected to grow to 21.6% in the next five years.

Pinterest has a higher concentration of people who are in a ‘buy’ state of mind, while Facebook users are more interested in interacting with friends - and brands. (According to Paul Adams, Facebook’s global head of brand design, Facebook’s strength is relationship-building, noting that many lightweight interactions over time can help promote brands.)

Pinterest traffic spent 60% more than did traffic coming from Facebook. Pinterest traffic converted to a sale 22% more than Facebook. Facebook traffic bounced 90% of the time, compared to 75% for Pinterest. Facebook users viewed an average of 1.6 pages. Pinterest users saw an average of 2.9 pages – an 81% difference.