Hints & Tips: Getting people to notice what’s on your website
Fancy Formatting, Fancy Words = Looks Like a Promotion = Ignored
Dr. Jakob Nielsen (Nielsen Norman Group) says users tend to ignore heavily formatted areas of a website because they resemble promotions.
It’s a side-effect of banner blindness and could hit you too if you design a site and try to put special focus on something by making it stand out in fancy ways. Nielsen adds that using fancy words instead of plain-spoken English will also increase the chance people ignore a section.