Banner blindness
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Banner blindness is a phenomenon in web usability were visitors on a website ignore banner-like information.
The term “banner blindness” was coined by Benway and Lane (1998) [1] as a result of website usability tests were a majority of the test subjects either consciously or unconsciously ignored information that was presented in banners. Subjects were given tasks to search information on a website. The information that was overlooked was both external advertisement banners and internal navigational banners like e.g. quick links. The placement of the banners on a web page had little effect on whether the subjects noticed them or not. The result of the study contradicted the popular web design guideline that larger, colourful and animated elements on a website are more likely to be seen by users.
However, in a similar experiment by Bayles (2000) [2] the results showed that users generally noticed web banners. This was proven by e.g. eye-tracking tests. The experiment concentrated on how users perceived a single web page and what they could recognise and recall of it afterwards.
Pagendarm and Schaumburg (2001) [3] argued that a possible explanation for the banner blindness phenomenon lay in the way users interacted with websites. Users tend to either search for specific information or aimlessly browse from one page to the next. Users have constructed web related cognitive schemata for different tasks on the web. This hypothesis was also suggested by Norman (1999) [4]. When searching for specific information on a website, users focus only on the parts of the page where they would assume the relevant information could be, i.e. small text and hyperlinks. Large colourful or animated banners and other graphics are in this case ignored. Usability tests that compared the perception of banners between groups of subjects searching for specific information and subjects aimlessly browsing seem to support this theory.
[edit] See also
- Conditioning
- Habituation
- Topics in human-computer interaction
- Usability testing
- Web design
- Click-through rate
[edit] Reference
Bayles, M., Just How 'Blind' Are We to Advertising Banners on the Web?, Usability News, 2000, Software Usability Research Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Wichita State University
Benway, J. P., Lane, D. M., Banner Blindness: Web Searchers Often Miss "Obvious" Links, 1998, Internet Technical Group, Rice University
Norman, D. A., Commentary: Banner Blindness, Human Cognition and Web Design, 1999, Internet Technical Group
Pagendarm, M., Schaumburg, H., Why Are Users Banner-Blind? The Impact of Navigation Style on the Perception of Web Banners, 2001, Journal of Digital Information
