Neilsen: Users Ignore Content That Looks Like Ads

Users Ignore Ad-like Content

by John Hughes
of http://www.oyster-web.co.uk

Last updated: 17 Sep 2007

Some people, myself include, thought this was perhaps stating the obvious, but apparently, if you make your Content look like an advertisement, the users on your site will ignore it.

So is the conclusion of a recent study by usability guru, Jakob Neilsen. Neilsen's study asked a group of users to look at the US Census Bureau's website and find the population of the US.

See the site here. Neilsen's study found that 86% of users failed to find the population of the US.

If you can't find it, by the way, it is the bold red text at the top right of the page!

The message is clear - if users subconciously believe text is an ad before they read it, then they will be predisposed to ignore that text. If you have important information in text that looks like an advertisement. It's a reasonable bet that that important message is not getting through to your website users.