heatEvery website has hotspots. I've spent several hours reading eyetracking studies, heatmap studies, and you name it studies. All of these studies show that websites have certain hotspots in common. I'm not going to link to these studies and let you run off and confuse yourself with a lot of contradictions. I'm going to point out some of the things that are the most important and I'll start with getting visitors to look at your site in the first place.

Good Headlines

This is a no-brainer. If you write good, short and succinct page titles, those are the items that are going to draw people in from search engines, feedreaders and social sites.

Other headlines are those that separate your pages into parts. They're just as important. People have a tendency to scan for relevant information before reading and these headlines can guide them to the exact parts they want to read.

Headlines within the content can be slightly (maybe 1 or 2 pixels) larger than the content that follows, but size isn't the factor you should concentrate on. Bold and/or italicized text stands out more, even when it's the same size.

Text Vs. Images

All of the studies indicate that text is read long before images are even looked at. If you want to use images, however, use large images. I'm not talking about the banner ads. Visitors have programmed themselves, probably unintentionally, to ignore most banner ads. My own experience and reading thousands of comments from other blog authors tells me that text link ads (like Google AdSense) are being largely ignored for the same reason.

Sidebar Links

If you want your visitors to focus on specific links, you have to do something to make them stand out. Making them larger and using odd fonts is not the answer. Making them bold and/or italicized is. You can even change to a different color, one that blends with the others, and make them appear more prominent. Widget titles are largely ignored, so you shouldn't waste too much time trying to dress them up.

Hotspots

The heatmaps and eyetracking studies show that people generally view a website in the shape of an "F", starting with the upper left corner and ignoring the header (at least at first). Then the eyes move from there to the right, back to the left at about the center of the page, to the right again, then to the bottom left of the page (the visible page) and to the right and then up to the top again. Most people aren't compelled to move down, below the fold, unless something in the text interests them.

Summary

As with anything, your mileage may vary. If you simply must read more in-depth articles, the post at Asian Ramblings will lead you to one article which will lead you to even more. Prepare to be busy for a few hours if you read it all.

My experience with this blog has shown me that most of the items in the studies apply to it. In fact, the only reason I haven't followed some of the suggestions is because, while I like to write, I don't like to optimize. I'm lazy. Still, I know I need to make a few minor changes to the sidebars and spend more time formatting the content to make it more readable.