Mentioned in an article about a report by Nielsen:
- Individuals read Web pages in an "F" pattern. They're more inclined to read longer sentences at the top of a page and less and less as they scroll down. That makes the first two words of a sentence very important.
- Surfers connect well with images of people looking directly at them. It helps if the person in the photo is attractive, but not too good looking. Photos of people who are clearly professional models are a turnoff. "The person has to be approachable," Pernice Coyne says.
- Images in the middle of a page can present an obstacle course.
There is another article showing the F-pattern nicely in pictures from Jakob Nielsen.