Tips

• Using blurbs with headlines rather than headlines-only seems to help disperse interest throughout a homepage (down the page). Recognize that a list of headlines-only high on the page might not get people to look as much on lower portions of the page.
• The use of blurbs does not appear to affect the number of clicks per headline — it just redistributes the clicks. If you have some stories that you want to get people to more than others, you might want to use blurbs with those headlines and place those stories near the top of the homepage.
• If you’re going to use blurbs, remember that the first few words may matter most. Our findings indicate that very few people go to the trouble of reading all of even short blurbs. Most people don’t invest much time in deciding whether or not to click through to an article, so keep head/blurb combos succinct.

—Eyetrack III (Poynter)

On my to-do list: update my “blurbs” page with results from this study.