1. **The F-Shaped Pattern**
- In the F-shaped scanning pattern, many fixations are concentrated at the top and the left side of the page. Specifically:
2. **Users first read in a horizontal movement**, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F’s top bar.
3. **Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement** that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F’s lower bar.
4. **Finally, users scan the content’s left side in a vertical movement**. Sometimes this is a slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F’s stem.
5. **The implications of this pattern are:**
- First lines of text on a page receive more gazes than subsequent lines of text on the same page.
- First few words on the left of each line of text receive more fixations than subsequent words on the same line.
6. **Thus, on the first lines of text, people will scan more words on the right than on the following lines**. This scanning pattern resembles the shape of the letter F, but it is rarely a perfect F. For example, in some cases, people may become interested in a paragraph down the page and may fixate on more words, reading toward the right again, so the pattern comes to resemble an E.
7. **The F-shaped pattern applies to users’ reading of the content area of the web page**. Thus, it describes people’s behavior when they visit a web page and assess its content, not their behavior when they are in a new section of the website and inspect the navigation bars (typically at the top and/or left of the page) to decide where to go next. So, in an F-pattern, the gazes on the left fall on the left part of the content area, not on the very leftmost part of the full page, if the left column is occupied by a navigation rail.
