Recent research suggests that text is more important than images on the web. "The web is primarily a text-driven medium and will remain so despite the rise of video," says New Thinking.
According to the article, "In traditional print media it has long been established that images are more powerful than text in getting attention. But the opposite is the case on the Web. Text dominates." Information derives from an Eyetrack III study that logs where subjects look on a web page, in this case news sites, where they look first on the page, what they spend most time viewing and what they ignore. Interestingly Google AdWords rely exclusively on text and it is true that some very successful print advertising such as poster campaigns work with just text, thanks to powerful headlines. The news study also noted how people scanned headlines, so whether designed to get people to read the rest of the news story or to learn about a product or service, the headline can be a deal breaker in getting attention and engagement.
Headline writing is an art, whether to encapsulate the story, to intrigue, to amuse or otherwise grab attention few words work best. Getting viewers to stop long enough to engage is essential whether promoting news stories or reading advertisements, both on web sites and in print. Flagging up something of relevance and interest to an individual within a sea of messages and information is where the combination of effective headline and strong visual image has been accepted wisdom in the news and advertising businesses. The same wisdom applied to designing press releases to gain the attention of a news editor by accompanying the release by an interesting image that the editor would recognise as in turn helping sell his publication.
Unlike Google AdWords, Facebook does include a meagre 110 x 80 px image along with 25 characters for headline and 135 characters for body text. Interestingly the Eyetrack III research found that "a postage-stamp mug shot was viewed by 10% of participants" and "images that are at least 210 x 230 px were viewed by more than half the testers." Many news sites routinely use small images the study observes. The Virtual News Office cleverly uses 4 different sizes of image - a small index image that is displayed alongside headline, dateline and story summary, a larger image that can be enlarged with a click to 300px and a high res option for downloading by picture editors. Interestingly the study signed off with a research tidbit: " We noticed that people often clicked on photos."
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