You might be interested in this:

http://www.virtualhosting.com/blog/2007/scientific-web-design-23-actionable-lessons-from-eye-tracking-studies/

Also check out the screen shots in this post:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

Notice how the persistent nav part of the pages (i.e. above the main title on the page) get almost no attention. This is why the top right (above the tabs) is such a dead zone in a page – perfect for utility links like login, help or my account, but crap for important links.

This is the reason why Trade Me has banners in the top right :-)

Someone told me once that your eyes tend towards the right for navigation more than the left.

That said, it’s a bloody ugly site that is reminiscent of blood splatter (all that red) in my opinion.

this really is a classic example of ‘add a really useful service, but bury it amongst a much broader (attempt at)the corporate message’

personally, i would much prefer a bill hub (a la Aussie BPAY – though that was not without its own usability issues last time i used it)

if you look at offline, when was the last time you visited all your billers individually to pay them… late 70′s maybe?

so online’s gotta be in one place for me. banks (payments aggregation – add bill presentment into the mix) and paper bill mailers (already have the data) have the most obvious opportunity, but are rather lethargic on this front. banks also suffer from the same problem as we’re seeing here – the nice clean one-stop see-&-pay gets buried in all the other products.

perhaps a start-up then?

Over the next 2 years there will be handwringing about the right way to do this internally and ‘how we’ve talked to customers about it’ (note – talked *to* not observed or talked *with*). And how it hasn’t saved the company money.

It’s primarily driven by people who want to create websites (hey – did you see my billing website) as opposed to people want to solve problems (hey – did you notice how that thing isn’t there anymore – that was me).

I think the marketers of FMCG goods (who have to shout all the time) have a lot to answer for as they try and apply these skills in the service industry (which is about being invisible – as you state in your Trade Me manifesto post about being like electricity).