Banner blindness
Encyclopedia
Banner blindness is a phenomenon in web usability
where visitors to a website
consciously or subconsciously ignore banner-like
information, which can also be called ad blindness.
The term "banner blindness" was coined by Benway and Lane as a result of website usability tests where a majority of the test subjects either consciously or unconsciously ignored information that was presented in banners. Subjects were given tasks to search information on a website. The information that was overlooked included both external advertisement banners and internal navigational banners, e.g. quick links. The placement of the banners on a web page had little effect on whether or not the subjects noticed them. The result of the study contradicted the popular web design guideline that larger, colourful and animated elements on a website are more likely to be seen by users.
However, in an experiment by Bayles the results showed that users generally noticed web banners. This was proven by eye-tracking tests and other means. The experiment concentrated on how users perceived a single web page and what they could recognise and recall of it afterwards. It has been argued that experiments like this without real-world tasks have poor methodology, and produce poor results.
Pagendarm and Schaumburg argued that a possible explanation for the banner blindness phenomenon lay in the way users interacted with websites. Users tend to either search for specific information or aimlessly browse from one page to the next. Users have constructed web related cognitive schemata for different tasks on the web. This hypothesis was also suggested by Norman. When searching for specific information on a website, users focus only on the parts of the page where they assume the relevant information will be, small text and hyperlinks. Large colourful or animated banners and other graphics are in this case ignored. Usability tests that compared the perception of banners between groups of subjects searching for specific information and subjects aimlessly browsing seem to support this theory.
Usability
Usability is the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object. The object of use can be a software application, website, book, tool, machine, process, or anything a human interacts with. A usability study may be conducted as a primary job function by a usability analyst or as a secondary job...
where visitors to a website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
consciously or subconsciously ignore banner-like
Web banner
A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web delivered by an ad server. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking to the website of the advertiser...
information, which can also be called ad blindness.
The term "banner blindness" was coined by Benway and Lane as a result of website usability tests where a majority of the test subjects either consciously or unconsciously ignored information that was presented in banners. Subjects were given tasks to search information on a website. The information that was overlooked included both external advertisement banners and internal navigational banners, e.g. quick links. The placement of the banners on a web page had little effect on whether or not the subjects noticed them. The result of the study contradicted the popular web design guideline that larger, colourful and animated elements on a website are more likely to be seen by users.
However, in an experiment by Bayles the results showed that users generally noticed web banners. This was proven by eye-tracking tests and other means. The experiment concentrated on how users perceived a single web page and what they could recognise and recall of it afterwards. It has been argued that experiments like this without real-world tasks have poor methodology, and produce poor results.
Pagendarm and Schaumburg argued that a possible explanation for the banner blindness phenomenon lay in the way users interacted with websites. Users tend to either search for specific information or aimlessly browse from one page to the next. Users have constructed web related cognitive schemata for different tasks on the web. This hypothesis was also suggested by Norman. When searching for specific information on a website, users focus only on the parts of the page where they assume the relevant information will be, small text and hyperlinks. Large colourful or animated banners and other graphics are in this case ignored. Usability tests that compared the perception of banners between groups of subjects searching for specific information and subjects aimlessly browsing seem to support this theory.
See also
- Click-through rateClick-through rateClickthrough rate is a way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign. The clickthrough rate of an advertisement is defined as the number of clicks on an ad divided by the number of times the ad is shown , expressed as a percentage. For example, if a banner ad is delivered 100...
- ConditioningConditioningConditioning may refer to:* In psychology, the process of performing some particular action to directly influence an individual's learning; see education...
- HabituationHabituationHabituation can be defined as a process or as a procedure. As a process it is defined as a decrease in an elicited behavior resulting from the repeated presentation of an eliciting stimulus...
- Inattentional blindnessInattentional blindnessInattentional blindness, also known as perceptual blindness, is when a person fails to notice some stimulus that is in plain sight. This stimulus is usually unexpected but fully visible. This typically happens because humans are overloaded with inputs. It is impossible to pay attention to every...
- Topics in human-computer interaction
- Usability testingUsability testingUsability testing is a technique used in user-centered interaction design to evaluate a product by testing it on users. This can be seen as an irreplaceable usability practice, since it gives direct input on how real users use the system...
- Web designWeb designWeb design is the process of planning and creating a website. Text, images, digital media and interactive elements are used by web designers to produce the page seen on the web browser...