Maximize golden areas on your website - track customer’s eyes

September 18, 2007 – 12:10 am

Several website experts keep conducting this “eye tracking research” to find the right spot where the customers or website users always focus on. Eye tracking is used in virtually every kind of marketing - TV ads, billboards, product packaging and web sites - to determine what works and what doesn’t with consumers. What is this eye tracking? Is it really that important? Lets try and answer some of these questions.

What is eye tracking study?
Eye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze (”where we are looking”) or the motion of an eye relative to the head. An eye tracker is a device for measuring eye positions and eye movements (definition source: Wikipedia).

In simpler words, the trackers record the areas (via heat sensors), where the the visitor’s eyes pays maximum attention. The image above shows the trends on search engines, which is more or less same for a website. The area on the top-left is called “The golden triangle”. This is the area which gets maximum attention

Is eye tracking analysis really that important?
Being involved in usability study and conversion improvement, I can say that this study makes a lot of sense and could help us define the important and sellable areas (or spots) on the website.
While we are trying to start a service or add a new package to the website, or simply want website visitors to focus on a thing, you should place it strategically on the area considered as the golden spots on the website. While designing the website, one could keep these things in mind to leverage certain areas to boost sales.

The eye tracking pattern may be based on any or all of the following:

• Individual perception
• Interest
• Need
• Age
• Education level
• Computer monitor
• Browser settings and others reasons etc.

It can help us find the following:

• Effectiveness of our website design
• Whether we are using the right areas for promotion
• If our users are able to find what they’re looking for
• The right content is used at the right spots
• Effectiveness of banners
• If search boxes are noticed at all

The results of numerous eye tracking studies enable web site designers and owners to optimize site pages for maximum impact and “stickiness”. Lets face it all that matters in an online business is NOT how busy you website is (traffic), but how many of them actually become customers. All versions are good as long as it is CONVERSION (hear the registers ringing:))