Recently, an eye tracking study realized by Eyetrack III revealed most useful information about how visitors read, and look the websites. Eyetrack III, observed 46 people for one hour to following eyes movement. This is the result of a particular type of news websites and real multimedia content. Here, I’ve summarized some of these result. The full eyetracking results are listed and published here.
Image Credit:Sarajea
1. First the headlines, after the pictures – In my view, is no new that an headline draw eye more than a picture, because the headlines is the first thing your eye see when you land on a website. However, for some people could not be so obvious. Usually, the trend is that people add photos and graphics specifically to draw the eye.
But studies have tested the headlines, and they found that the headlines in the upper left of the page, grab more attention by visitors when they land on a webpage . This study can be useful especially if you want increase your profit with Adsense or other contextual advertising programs. As you can see, I’ve put an adsense banner in the upper left of every pages. I can assure that, I had an increase of Click-through rate with this banner.
2. People read the first couple words – The study established that people before to read the full article, scan the first few words. This is the reason you should create a magnetic headlines. For instance, you could start with a question in order to grab attention. In my view, put a banner ads within an article near the first words is the best way to grab attention, and if the results are true you should get more click trough from your visitors.
3. Reader move fast – When visitors read the headlines, they take 1 second in total to decide if continue to read, then you need to be very fast to grab their attention. However, it worth the rule of the second point. If you put an ad banner near the headlines and grab attention fastly you have more chance to get a few clicktrough.
4. Use side navigation – Studies demonstrated that navigation bar place at top of the page will be seen immediately. In my view, this is a great opportunity to place an alternative to standard text ads like the links units.
Two Free Eye Tracking Services That Works
Eye Tracking Is the process that determines what part of an advertisement consumers look. There are many Eye Tracking Services that help you to:
- Identify weak spots within your site.
- Help you to improve the design of the layout of a webpage.
- Help you to choose an effective brand.
If you want know if the homepage layout is effective, or if the ads are placed where they will be seen by the audience, these two services below can help you give a great hand and answer those questions and more.
Crazy Egg is a recent eye tracking services that allows you to track where on your website your visitors are clicking and know which layout of your site works better. Crazy Egg offers a free version that tracks up to 5,000 visitors per month. Stats are updated every hour. If you want to get get live updates you need to get the pay plans.($99)
If you want know where and how people look your site quickly, you can use an online free services called “Fang-GUI“. I’ve already wrote about it in my old article. All you have to do is to upload an image(jpg, png<1MB) and the software automatically create your headmap. Simple and effective.
Good Work!
Nicola
