According to a report in USA TODAY, Nielsen Norman Group, an authority on making websites and products easy to use, applied sophisticated eye-tracking equipment, to help them determine what consumers really look at on the web vs. what they say they look at.
Here is one of their findings:
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.
I don’t want to discount these important findings, but I do want to say teens working on their high school paper learn on day one that the lead is the most important part of the story.