POYNTER - Online participants read an average of 77 percent of story text they chose to read.

http://eyetrack.poynter.org/





READING DEPTH
Participants read deep into stories (including jump text) in print and online, although reading decreased as story length increased.
Online participants read an average of 77 percent of story text they chose to read. This is substantially higher than the amount of story text participants read in broadsheets and tabloids. Broadsheet participants read an average of 62 percent of stories they selected. Tabloid participants read an average of 57 percent.

Why would people read more of a story online? Home pages prominently feature brief, up-to-the-minute breaking news reports, which we coded as stories. We wondered whether the shortness of these and other online stories could have been a factor.

However, when we looked at story lengths -- from 1 to 4 inches for the shortest stories to those 19 inches and longer -- we found that online readers still read more text regardless of the length.

We also measured whether a story was read from start to finish, and found 63 percent of story text chosen by online participants was read to completion. Reading in the two print formats was considerably lower. Forty percent of stories selected were read all the way through in broadsheets, 36 percent in tabloids.

On average, 68 percent of the continued or jumped story selected by a tabloid reader was read. In broadsheet, that number was 59 percent.




READING PATTERNS
Participants fell into two categories -- methodical readers and scanners. Online readers were equally likely to be methodical as they were to be scanners. Print readers were more likely to be methodical. Both types read about the same amount of text. Methodical readers read top to bottom. They did not scan very often. In print, they often read a full, two-page view, and they re-read some material. When viewing online news, they used drop-down menus and navigation bars to locate stories.
Scanners viewed headlines and other page display elements without reading much text. They may have read part of a story, looked at photos or other package items, but they generally did not return once they left the text. When consuming online news, a scanner used home page elements like story lists. Eventually the scanner would click on a headline or other story link.

Online, there was very little difference in the amount of text read between methodical readers and scanners.

Broadsheet and tabloid methodical readers read about the same amount of story text they selected.

Tabloid scanners read the smallest volume of text, on average.




NFORMATION RECALL AND STORY FORMS
Alternative story forms (including Q&As, timelines, lists and fact boxes) helped readers remember facts presented to them in a test of six different prototype designs of one story.
  


Readers were given one of six different versions of a story about bird flu. Three were in print, three were online. Each version included identical information -- fact for fact, but the design and story structure differed. When a reader finished reading one of these prototypes for five minutes, he or she answered questions about the story.

Alternative story forms also  drew a higher amount of visual attention, compared to regular text in print. This visual draw was particularly powerful in broadsheets. Alternative story form elements accounted for only about 4 percent of the 16,976 text elements available to be viewed in those newspapers, but they received more than their share of attention.

This confirms the findings of earlier EyeTrack studies and other research that short text, especially with visual elements, is accessible and attractive to readers.

READING SEQUENCES The contrast between print and online points of entry is especially stark. Headlines and photos were the first visual stop for print readers; navigation was the first stop for online readers. People reading broadsheets viewed headlines before photos. Fifty-three percent of participants reading broadsheets viewed headlines as the first point of entry on the front page. A photo or another headline most often came next for those readers. This differs somewhat from Poynter’s first EyeTrack study in 1990 in which readers entered a broadsheet page through the largest photo first. Because readers in this study read live stories rather than prototypes, one explanation for the difference is that they had heightened interest in real stories (on a day they had been asked not to read the paper before being observed). Also, as frequent readers of the newspaper, they may have been guided by what the editors chose as most significant.

The eye movements of a reader were captured using small video cameras. The movements were represented on a recording as a crosshair. (Photo by Amanda Determan) STORY PACKAGING Lead stories and packaged stories attracted more attention in print than other stories. We defined a lead story as the one with the largest headline on the page. Our definition of a story package was: a headline, story text and a dominant photo, graphic or illustration PLUS at least one other storytelling device like a Q&A, a timeline, a fact box, a short list, etc. Large headlines received more attention than small in print. This finding confirms Poynter’s first eyetracking study in 1990, when large headlines were viewed more than small, and large headlines were among the main points of entry on front pages. BRIEFS Briefs were well viewed and briefs with images worked best. The presence of a visual alongside a brief, in print, increased its likelihood of being seen by more than 34% above what we would expect, based on the number available to be seen. TEASERS  Visual elements attract attention to teasers. A photo, icon or artwork drew above average attention to a teaser, particularly in broadsheet format, where they drew more than twice as much attention compared to tabloid. This confirms the finding from Poynter’s 1990 eyetracking study. VOICE AND OPINION Print readers were clearly interested in “voice of the reader” content. We classified editorials, op-ed columnists and the work of a newspaper’s own columnists as the “voice of the newspaper.” Elements such as letters to the editor and reader feedback were categorized as “voice of the reader.” “Voice of the reader” elements in broadsheets drew 68 percent more attention than expected based on the number of those elements available to be seen. In tabloids “voice of the reader” elements drew 30 percent more attention than expected. The “voice of the paper” elements (editorials, columnists) in broadsheets and tabloids generated less attention than expected. PHOTOGRAPHS AND GRAPHICS Large photos and documentary photos drew more eyes than small photos or staged photos. Mug shots received relatively little attention. This included pictures of columnists. Readers preferred live action photos, such as this image from the St. Petersburg Times sports section. (Photo by Dirk Shadd) Color photos receieved more visual attention than expected among readers of broadsheet papers, while black and white photos received less attention than expected. Cutlines or captions were popular and well read. Those that accompanied photos that were part of a lead story or story package were more likely to be seen than cutlines that appeared with standard stories. INFOGRAPHICS Maps and explanatory graphics were viewed more than charts in print and online. An overwhelming majority of graphic eye stops online, 88 percent of the total, were on weather graphics. Graphics showing traffic patterns also received a lot of attention online. ADVERTISING With broadsheet ads, bigger might not always be better. As powerful as full page ads are in broadsheet, a half-page or almost full-page attracted as much attention. This leads us to think that adjacency to editorial content increases the likelihood of an ad being seen.             Color was a big draw in both print formats. And a color ad in broadsheet format generated well more than twice the attention of a black and white ad. Almost half of the print ads were small (less than a quarter page) and they drew less attention than their presence would suggest in both broadsheet and tabloid. Online ads with moving elements attracted a lot of eye stops, more than a quarter of the total on ads. Banner ads and small ads generated the most eye stops, and it was equal