Use of Visual Cues

Visual cues are everywhere on web sites, most are so subtle that we don’t even consciously notice, some are glaringly obvious and are almost impossible to miss. But be it a conscious or unconscious clue they are very important in our every day lives, especially on the internet.

Most of the time we become so used to seeing something in a particular way if it suddenly changes we become confused. Take links on web pages for example, we have become so used to seeing a little underline telling us it is a link that if that underline is not there people become confused and begin to question whether it is actually a link.

Thankfully more and more people are becoming aware of different types of links such as when hovering over a link the colour changing or the underline appearing then instead.

Another rather important visual cue is the placement of a page name, this is common place on most web sites now a days but acts as a aid for new users to work out where they are after clicking a link. If a page name was not displayed the link could have taken the user anywhere and would disorientate them immensely.

Animation is very useful for catching the users attention. Although large flash banners can take a long time to load and annoy the user, small, simple banners, or animated gifs, can load relatively quickly and draw the users attention to a certain part of the page more so than a static image or text.

Flash banners are also useful for keeping visitors too. By using the same banner to advertise numerous products it keeps the users attention in the same spot to look for new things on return visits as well as on their first visit to the page.

As I said before though it is not necessarily points as obvious as these that users pick up on. Using a clear visual hierarchy is also very important but is usually an unconscious . It helps users to differentiate between important information and less important information (by using different sizes), it means that things related logically are also related visually and it also shows what belongs to what (again like the page name encompassing the page).

Another subconscious cue is the use of colour. Having sections of the site which are brighter or use a different colour to the rest of the site inevitably stand out and catch the users eye. This is a useful way of ‘sign posting’ useful or important information we want the user to read or look at.

The use of text itself can also act as a subconscious visual cue. If a page contains a large block of text then this is much more likely to be ignored by the user than a smaller block of text. This is down to the user wanting to quickly scan a page and pick out relevant information quickly rather than having to read loads of text and finding at the end it wasn’t relevant to them.

Text once again falls into the category of visual hierarchy. Larger text (such as text in a H1 tag) is obviously more important than smaller text (such as paragraph text).