The article below was focused on eyetracking of online articles for news sites, but many of the information gleaned can be applied to good old readability for all web pages.

When one of world’s best-known usability experts, Jakob Nielsen, conducts eyetracking research to test what his usability work has shown, the results generate some beneficial tips for online editors. This is what happened in late 2005, when Nielsen and Tara Pernice Coyne, the Nielsen/Norman Group’s director of research, conducted an eyetracking test with 255 people in New York City.

With a little more than half of the participants (63 percent) ages 30 to 49, the test generated results applicable to the target audience for most news sites. Additionally, 20 percent were 18-29 and 16 percent were 50-64. Fifty-eight percent were female, 42 percent were male. Every test subject was given 50 tasks to complete. Sessions with each test subject lasted about one to two hours.

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A common misnomer concerning websites is that all you have to do is put one out there on the Internet and new customers will come flowing in. Unfortunately it isn’t that easy.

Your website is just another tool in your marketing cadre, and it is a powerful one at that. In other formats you are limited in the amount of information that you can squeeze into the space you have. Yellowpages ads are only so big. That is especially true with business cards. But a website gives you the ability to put a whole lot of info into a very small about of space (it is virtual space after all). A link to your site on your business card suddenly gives potential customers the ability to find as much information about your business as you care to share. Same with your Yellopages ad, so make sure you get the website link on it when you renew next year.

You will also have a new email account with your website. Make sure to use a signature in your correspondence now. That way you can have your name, address, phone, fax and website link automatically added to the bottom of your emails. In Outlook you go to Tools - Options - Mail Format and then click on signatures. In Outlook Express it is Tools - Options - Signatures.

So after you’ve gotten new business cards, updated your advertising material and all that, what next? Tell people about your site. Make sure you give the url (website address) to all your prospective clients (email address too). Get your business friends to link their site to yours and vice versa (this really helps with your search engine page ranking - more on that in a later post).

So here is your to do list now that you have a website:

To do

• Order new business cards
• Order new letterhead
• Update your Yellowpages ad
• Set up an email signature
• Tell everyone about your new site
• Find business partners/suppliers/friends to link to your site from theres’
• Re-align your marketing pitch to send people to your site for more info
• Add your site’s url to any and all marketing campaigns

Getting a website isn’t a free ride to success. But with a little planning it can be a great item to have in your marketing toolbox.