You Lookin’ At Me? Eye Tracking Reality From The Industry Leader.

Where do customers look when they visit your content pages? Where do they look while using a cart? Take a look at the findings from Nielsen Norman Group's usability studies using eye tracking technology.

Notice how after the headline is read users scan down an inch or two for essential content, thus showing the trend that users don’t read…they scan. However, if they hit a short, well written paragraph or two, they will indeed read….and interact.

Background

Example of an eyetracking "heatmap" that shows how much users looked at different parts of a Web page. Areas where users looked the most are colored red; the yellow areas indicate fewer fixations, followed by the least-viewed blue areas. Gray areas didn't attract any fixations.

The above example is from a website's "About Us" pages. The heatmap clearly shows users' tendency to read in an "F" pattern, and their focus on information that's presented in bulleted lists. In this case, there's also a small amount of attention to the "see also" area, but no viewing of the promotions in the rightmost column. (See our separate research project for detailed guidelines for the design of "About Us" areas of corporate websites).

This is an example of eye tracking from an e-commerce checkout process. In this shopping cart, users didn't pay much attention to the cross-selling offers, which is a common finding. (See our separate research project for detailed guidelines for the design of e-commerce sites).

See full report here: http://www.useit.com/eyetracking/