The design of the layout of the Internet webpage and the display of the goods in the mall are both very particular. If the customer opens the product details page and finds that the content does not meet their expectations, they will close the webpage. The longer the customer browses the product details page, the greater the probability of product conversion. Before understanding the customer’s browsing habits, we first observe the page layout of the AliExpress homepage and the Amazon homepage.
Through observation, we can find that the two webpages have the following common points in design. First, there is a navigation bar on the far left of the webpage, and the platform lists the categories of goods it operates in the form of navigation on the far left; second, there is a row of search bars at the top of the webpage; third, the middle part of the webpage is placed with carousel product advertising pictures or pictures of the main products.
In fact, like the display of goods in the mall, the design of the product page and the display of goods in the physical store are very particular, and are designed according to the customer’s browsing habits. Scientific research shows that customers do not read the content on the webpage word by word after opening it. Most of the time, customers are not reading the content on the screen, but scanning. People generally follow the “F” type reading habit when browsing the webpage. The customer will first browse horizontally in the upper part of the content area, then move their sight down a distance, browse horizontally again in a small range, and finally browse vertically quickly on the left side of the content area. This forms the English letter “F”.
Of course, the customer’s browsing behavior does not always accurately include these three processes. Sometimes, after these three processes, the customer will also browse the horizontal hotspots at the bottom, which makes the entire browsing heat map look more like “E”. Sometimes, when the customer browses, only the above-mentioned behaviors 1 and 3 are reflected, which makes the browsing heat map look like an inverted “L”. But according to big data, the customer’s screen browsing heat map still reflects the “F” image more consistently.
After understanding the “F” type of customer browsing habits, we should pay attention to the following when designing product detail web pages: First, customers will not read the entire web page carefully word by word, and they will not browse all the content on the page (the large blank area outside the “F”); second, put the most important information in the first two paragraphs (the two horizontal hot spots in the “F” type hot spot map); third, in the subsequent content, put keywords and information at the beginning of the paragraph so that customers can pay more attention to them when browsing vertically on the left. In general, for the “F” type browsing behavior, put the most important information at the top and put the relevant key content and information on the left side of the content area.