News-reporting sites were used in the study. The researchers reported these numbers after carefully measuring the points of first fixations of the 67 volunteer readers who took part in the test. The method involved the reader wearing a headset to precisely track eye movements and correlating these movements with areas of the screen. While the Poynter-Stanford study focussed on news sites, administrators of other types of content should be mindful of the findings and consider including more text in key areas of web sites. There is another good reason why web pages should be text rich.
Text provides the popular Internet search engines with a means to quantify what a page is about.
Careful web page writers use strategically important keywords in the text. This helps make sure that the page ranks well on a search relevant to the subject matter. It's well known that the right kind of incentive can be of enormous benefit to any kind of marketing. Coupons of various forms have a long tradition of boosting business in the off-line world. This success has translated well on-line.