Users read only about 20% of the words on a web page
Verified Confidence: medium
Primary source found; it says the same thing, the scope matches, and it is reasonably current.
- Commonly cited as
- "People only read 20% of the text on a page"
- True origin
- Nielsen Norman Group (Jakob Nielsen) — How Little Do Users Read?
- Type
- Stat check: A widely repeated statistic traced back to its origin.
- Year
- 2008
- Data as of
- 2008
- Last checked
- What the source says
On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.
- Method & sample
- Calculation from page-view logs of a small group of experienced users (Weinreich et al., ACM Transactions on the Web); average page 593 words.
- Drift between quote and source
- Date: 2008 desktop-era data
- Type: an upper-bound estimate from time on page, not eye-tracking of reading
- Interest
- NN/g sells UX training.
Safe rephrasing
NN/g estimated in 2008 that users have time to read at most 28% of a page's words, about 20% in practice.
Sources we opened
- NN/g: How Little Do Users Read? (2008) (primary)
Machine-readable: /api/claims/users-read-20-percent-of-words.json · Last checked 2026-10-16