As per Webcredible March 2010.

1. People have banner blindness
People don’t notice banners. It’s been found in eye tracking studies their gaze literally avoids settling on any area that looks like an advert instead it seems people actively try to avoid looking at them.

Banner blindness affects most people, and has a startling side effect. Useful areas of the site that are overly graphically designed (and end up looking like an advert) are ignored by users as though they were adverts.

A good way to avoid banner blindness is to ensure your site banners are mostly text, so that they look as much like useful site content as possible.

2. People develop tunnel vision
People who come to watch user testing for the first time are amazed at the tunnel vision participants develop when they are doing a task. An example from a recent round of user testing – The link the participants required was placed in the right hand column, next to an article, but only 2 of 8 participants found it.

If the link users are searching for is not named correctly or not placed where they expect then they will, surprisingly regularly, get stuck. Participants simply don’t notice things on the screen unless it’s where they expected.

Unfortunately there’s no clear way to avoid this problem. The best method to ensure you help users who’ve developed tunnel vision is to perform user testing on key tasks and see if they get stuck.

Read more about points 3-10 at http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-usability/online-behaviour.shtml

3. People won’t hang around on your homepage
4. People don’t have patience
5. People’s gaze trails are manic
6. People don’t take in what they look at
7. People are happy to scroll
8. People don’t read
9. People are creatures of habit
10. People are happy to click through more than 3 levels