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This dominant reading pattern looks somewhat like an F and has the following three components: Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F's top bar. Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F's lower bar. Finally, users scan the content's left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F's stem.

The F viewing pattern is a rough, general shape rather than a uniform, pixel-perfect behavior.

Users won't read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won't. The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There's some hope that users will actually read this material, though they'll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second. Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behavior. They'll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words.

Among tablet owners, at least, reading on the mobile Web is preferable to using native apps, according to a recent survey from the Online Publishers Association. 

Forty-one percent of tablet-bound readers prefer reading on the Web, compared to the 30% who would rather launch a standalone app from a specific publisher. Aggregated news-reading apps like Flipboard and Zite rated surprisingly low on the list. 

Last month, Jason Pontin, editor of MIT Technology Review, wrote a widely read takedown of native apps, citing Apple's steep revenue share and the technical and design challenges associated with producing such apps.  "But the real problem with apps was more profound," Pontin wrote. "When people read news and features on electronic media, they expect stories to possess the linky-ness of the Web, but stories in apps didn’t really link."

studies suggest, if you're asked to recall a specific piece of information in a text, you'll remember where on the page you were when you read it.

Holding a book grants you a tactile sense of textual topography

79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word. (Update: a newer study found that users read email newsletters even more abruptly than they read websites.)

Web pages have to employ scannable text, using highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and color are others) meaningful sub-headings (not "clever" ones) bulleted lists one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph) the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion half the word count (or less) than conventional writing

100 characters is the engagement sweet spot for a tweet. 

a spike in retweets among those in the 71-100 character range—so-called “medium” length tweets. These medium tweets have enough characters for the original poster to say something of value and for the person retweeting to add commentary as well.

the ultra-short 40-character posts received 86 percent higher engagement than others.

"It's interesting. Do I want everything I read to be broadcasted? To be honest, I'm not sure I always do," Herman says. "Which is why, on Storify at least, I cancel it when it's not something I want to share." Should readers have to be on guard and take that extra step? And what's the upside of frictionless sharing? Why is this good for readers? "I mean, clearly it's more meaningful when someone decides to actively share something," Herman says. "It would be bad if a share from just happening to read something through Open Graph got the same weight as something that you actually shared."

Instead of a willful act of sharing, which says to your Facebook friends, "This matters to me," frictionless sharing is just a broadcast of your Internet habits. There's no benefit for you except as a kind of vain performance, and there's very little benefit to your friends, since the signal-to-noise ratio goes way up.

[Facebook is] doing some tweaking with the algorithm to make it less prominent," Herman says. "I guess they're realizing, you know, maybe these things aren't as engaging as they thought they would be."

Psychology and economics professor George Loewenstein conducted an in-depth study and discovered that the peak combination for triggering a high level of curiosity included: Violating the right expectations Tickling the “information gap” Knowing when to stop

In both headlines there is something readers may not expect. As a result, disorder is created, which requires investigation to restore sense and meaning. Curiosity headlines are some of the hardest to write, because simply turning something on its head usually isn’t enough to encourage your reader to take action. To create a real desire for your reader to click, read, or sign up, you have to violate the right expectations. Loewenstein discovered that curiosity increased when you highlighted a gap in someone’s knowledge, particularly when it related to a topic that interested them.

It’s not enough to create disorder. You have to stop your reader from thinking, “Oh, that’s probably going to be about X, Y and Z — I bet I already know that.” To sustain curiosity, Loewenstein suggests using feedback to quash this thought before it arises. Tests revealed that most people assume they know more than they actually do, so you definitely want to make sure you’re not losing readers who “think” they know what you’re going to tell them.

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

visual breaks -- like a line or rule -- discouraged people from looking at items beyond the break, like a blurb. (This also affects ads

We found that when people look at blurbs under headlines on news homepages, they often only look at the left one-third of the blurb. In other words, most people just look at the first couple of words -- and only read on if they are engaged by those words.

People typically scan down a list of headlines, and often don't view entire headlines. If the first words engage them, they seem likely to read on. On average, a headline has less than a second of a site visitor's attention.

people will go to great lengths to avoid reading.

even the best content can’t undo the effects of poor design and graphics that essentially say “don’t read me.” Good design isn’t everything, and it certainly doesn’t negate the need to create strong wording. However, bad design can negate even the strongest wording in its entirety

80/20 rule: 8 of 10 readers will read your headline copy but only 2 of 10 will read your entire post.

Lois writes: “All creativity should communicate in a nanosecond.”

AIDA is the classic marketing formula heralded by a lot of great copywriters including Brian Clark, Sonia Simone and ad man John Carlton.

There’s no denying that email is showing signs of decline — the number of visitors to web-based email sites fell 6% in 2010 compared to the previous year, and email engagement declined at an even greater rate, according to a report from digital analysis company comScore.

In response to these changes, brands are quickly adapting by combining email, social media and even mobile marketing tactics.

successful brands are doing just that — cross-pollinating email marketing strategies via email clients, social platforms and mobile devices. Ultimately, brands still find email effective because it’s inexpensive and universally accepted by people all over the world.

Couldn’t the NYT just know what I’d want to read and serve that up to me via algorithm? “Hell, yeah!” Adelman responds to that last question. “The fact that we continue to reflect that organization structure is not a statement about how we think things should be consumed. It is a statement about, there are some very natural ways for people to look for things.” Those “natural” ways of looking at things really come down to, again, user expectation. While the redesign does incorporate some algorithmically suggested sections within navigation, Adelman stresses that the NYT simply can’t remove the option to predictably click on particular topics, lest their audience question the publication’s transparency.

“There’s an element of trust that’s important in any relationship, whether it’s with the NYT or another publication, or a tool or experience you’re accustomed to,” Adelman says. “You don’t want to feel like things are moving under your feet." They also can’t merely fill the NYT homepage with articles they think someone might like to read, because then they cease to be what they are--the world’s news, presented without assumptions or bias. “I don’t think people want a customized version of the NYT homepage. They might benefit from some amount of material focused on their interests, but people come to the NYT because they want the NYT’s take on things.”

H.G. Wells describing the “world brain” as a  “complete planetary memory for all mankind.”

As a Google engineer told author Nicholas Carr, “We’re not scanning all those books to be read by people. We’re scanning them to be read by our AI.”

Google’s launch partner for this service is Forbes, but others can implement these recommendations by just adding a single line of code to their mobile sites.

These recommendations, Sternberg told me, are based on social recommendations on the site from your friends on Google+ (only if you are signed in, of course), what the story you just read was about, the story’s author and some of Google’s “secret sauce.”

The new Google+-based recommendations, interestingly, only appear once a reader slides back up on a page. This, Google’s analytics show, is a pretty good indicator that a user has finished reading a post (even if there is still more text left on the page). The recommendation widget then slides up from the bottom and one extra click brings up more relevant items for the page. The other option is to show the widget after a user scrolls past a configurable CSS entity.

Guber argues that humans simply aren’t moved to action by “data dumps,” dense PowerPoint slides, or spreadsheets packed with figures. People are moved by emotion. The best way to emotionally connect other people to our agenda begins with “Once upon a time…”

Is “telling to win” just the latest fashion in a business world that is continually swept with new fads and new gurus pitching the newest can’t-miss secret to success? Or does it represent a real and deep insight into communications strategy?

I think it’s a real insight. I’m a literary scholar who uses science to try to understand the vast, witchy power of story in human life. Guber and his allies have arrived through experience at the same conclusions science has reached through experiment.

When I ask participants why they’ve chosen to receive emails from a particular source, read a specific blogger, or follow a certain Twitter user, they give me a variation on the same answer: “Because I like their unique point of view.” Readers will only listen to you if you’re giving them something they can’t find anywhere else.

My numbers-based research has confirmed the importance of uniqueness and novelty. The data shows that novelty is contagious; ordinariness is not.

Tweets with uncommon words get Retweeted more often than the usual things we see every day. Having a unique way of expressing yourself will earn you more Retweets.

In terms of specific days and times to post on Facebook, here are some of the stats I found: Engagement rates are 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays. I love the way this was explained in Buddy Media’s study: as they put it, “the less people want to be at work, the more they are on Facebook!”

Another study found that engagement was 32% higher on weekends, so the end of the week is definitely a good rough guide to start experimenting with.

The best time of day to post on Facebook is debatable, with stats ranging from 1pm to get the most shares, to 3pm to get more clicks, to the broader suggestion of anytime between 9am and 7pm. It seems that this generally points to early afternoon being a solid time to post, and anytime after dinner and before work being a long shot.