We’ve featured a few of our favorite in-store eye tracking experiments, but eye tracking can be just as useful with websites and mobile apps. Our online eye tracking experiments combine methods to uncover not just what people look at, but how the content makes them think and feel. In one eye tracking study conducted on iPads, users looked through the mobile versions of three well-known magazines. When we crunched the data, we uncovered some really interesting trends in user behavior. Let’s take a peek.
What Users Look At
Eye tracking for mobile devices enables us to create heat maps of what people look at and for how long. With iPad magazines, 100 percent of study subjects noticed the text, headers, quotes, and images, and nearly all of them evaluated those aspects (took a deeper look). Interestingly, the digital-only elements didn’t fare so well. Only 72 percent of people noticed embedded videos, and 67 percent evaluated them. A mere 32 percent noticed interactive images, and just 26 percent evaluated them. This suggests that, at least with magazines, users still look for the same elements they would with a paper copy, while the digital features are not as visible.
How Users Think & Feel
Through facial coding, we can see real-time emotional responses to content. In the magazine study, we found that emotional responses were fairly predictable: good news generated positive emotions, and sad images generated negative emotions. News stories can’t all be positive, of course, but we found that a text explanation accompanying a serious image turned the emotional response from negative to positive. Celebrity images attracted attention and generally received positive emotional responses, especially with stars people love or love to hate. Images of controversial celebrities or confusing situations caused more negative feelings. Other emerging methods we use include skin conductance, heart rate and other physiological measurements to understand what is influencing or exciting users as they interact.
How Eye Tracking for Mobile Devices Helps You
The most successful websites and apps combine content and design to evoke a response in visitors, be it keeping them on the site for longer, making them return often, or closing a sale. If you want your online presence to be more effective, or if you’re considering a complete overhaul, finding out what visitors see and how it affects their thinking and emotions can offer you insights that you simply can’t get from click-through rates or time on page.
For an in-depth view of how your website really affects visitors—and the changes you could make to increase engagement—contact us for a consultation.
Tags: Consumer BehaviorDecision MakingEmotional ResponseEye TrackingFacial CodingMobile