Eyetools Eyetracking Research

A 3rd Kind of Conversion Problem: The Most Exciting One

2010-06-23T10:28:00-06:00

Most clients come to us because they believe:

They have a design problem.

Many clients come to us because they believe:

They have a messaging or copy problem.

As you can imagine, most of the time, they do have these problems.

However, very often we help clients solve a problem that only becomes apparent once you know definitely that people are reading what you have written (which, unless you are eyetracking people, you do not know definitively). This conversion problem people rarely come to us for, sadly:

What people read is not satisfying their need for information, thereby not enabling them to convert.

It’s difficult to diagnose this 3rd problem if you are not sure whether you have the first two problems as well. This 3rd problem excites me, because

It moves beyond “fixing design flaws.”
It moves beyond “your copy isn’t working, even though you’re following what may people consider to be best practices.”
Instead, it moves into the realm of understanding, and then optimizing, how people make a decision to convert to your product/service/offering.

And it is in this 3rd area that we’ve been able to leverage our expertise to identify, and then guide the client through creating, new content that has offered great conversion opportunities.

It’s been a lot of fun.

Eyetools Doubles Conversion Rate for Fortune 100 Client

2010-05-10T16:15:00-06:00

We were given responsibility for eye tracking testing, and then optimizing, a key product template in a website sales-generation funnel for one of our Fortune 100 clients (we aren’t allow to say who, unfortunately. *sigh*). Using our methodology, the client more than doubled their conversions — and we believe that we can do this repeatably.

The client had already performed MVT (Multivariate Testing) and had realized a 2% lift in conversions — hoping for more, our client brought us in to make the web site generate more sales and revenue. The website already looked nice and was well designed. The client was pushing for a design change and wanted to ensure they were making the right decision; they didn’t want to risk reducing conversions, and sales.

During initial testing, we identified the primary, secondary, and tertiary problems (where were not exactly what the client expected them to be). Focusing on the actual problems, we were able to make a series of modifications initially to the page template design, and then later on the text copy. Through multiple rounds of testing and optimization, we proved to our client, at each step of the way, that the improvements we made beat the control.

When the new design with new copy was deployed live to their website, A/B-testing click metrics indicated that it was producing conversions more than double what the control was, and had increased sales 2.5 times greater than those produced by all of the other optimization methods they had applied in the past.

We were happy with these results since they were in line with what we expected that we could do. We were especially happy with the results because the website was already effective, good looking, and thought by many to be an example of a good implementation. So, we didn’t just take a bad thing and make it good; we took a good thing and made it better, making our client a lot of extra money in the process.

The Eyetools Blog Is... Not Written In Very Often

2009-12-18T03:37:00-07:00

Given the number of gaps in writing we’ve had over the years, I think that we at Eyetools have to admit that we are not a very “writing in the blog” focused company.

The last couple of years have been exciting in terms of the work that we’ve been doing, the extent that we’ve helped clients, and the new improvements we’ve made to provide more value to clients, not to mention the quality of the clients we’ve been working with, but through out all of this, it seems like writing in the blog just doesn’t make it to the top of the priority queue. This is ironic since we’ve been doing a fair amount of copywriting and messaging testing over this time.

So, if you’re here to evaluate whether we’re still alive, we are, even if our blog doesn’t look like it.

Give us a call, however, if you’d like a warm, lively discussion about your project.

Until next time,

Greg Edwards
Founder of Eyetools
415.409.9393

Small Decreases in Viewing Can Decrease the Probability of Being Clicked by More Than 50%

2008-02-01T12:06:00-07:00

For a long time, proponents of eye-tracking have said that the amount of viewing a link receives directly effects its likelihood of being clicked. Well, it turns out that this is particularly true in the case of search results. Recently, Eyetools and Sendtec released a study showing that decreased viewing on a search results page has a huge impact on click-through conversions. This is true for both paid and organic listings.

For example, the data shows that if overall viewing of a link falls from 80% to 60%, the initial probability that the user will select the link decreases by over 50%! This helps to explain why even small drops in page position for organic search links has such a significant impact on a site's conversion rate.

In addition to emphasizing the need for ads and organic listings to have high page positions, this result also means optimizing link performance is critical since not everyone can be a top organic or adwords listing.

I've included the excerpt below in the hopes that it will open a dialogue about the effect of increased viewing for other kinds of web pages.

----------------------- REPORT EXCERPT -------------------------

The graph shows an important correlation between increased link viewing and the probability of being clicked. [...] The page elements which received the most clicks were those seen by the most users. As user viewing decreased, so did the number of clicks. [... Our data shows that] decreases in viewing will have a disproportionately large negative impact on click-through.

A number of other studies have explored various factors which influence a user’s decision to click including link text, description, and perceived link relevance. Our study shows that percent user viewing can be an excellent predictor of user click behavior for online searches. Our study supports the logic that users must first see a link before they can make selections based on text descriptions or relevance. There are many factors which contribute to whether or not a user decides to select a link, but all things considered, eye tracking data is a reliable and efficient way of understanding why people do and do not click.

It is important to note that this data is specific to search results and should not be used in conversation about standard web pages. Eyetracking has proven to be very helpful in directing redesigns of web pages, landing pages, and emails with great increases in conversion rates, but this data presented here is specific to search result pages and should not be generalized to other pages.

Update, June 2010: Sadly, it seems that we outlived SendTec, our partner on this project. It appears that they closed down in 2009, taking the report down with the rest of their website.

Eyetracking the Google Checkout Button: It Does Not Increase Viewing Significantly, But...

2008-01-04T11:10:00-07:00

(a new study by Eyetools & SendTec)

If you're hoping that adding Google Checkout to your search result will boost viewing of your ad by making it stand out on the page, it won't much. However, it does seem to increase clicking by those that do see it, so that's probably all you care about!

The Eyetools/SendTec Google Checkout Button Study covers the details, and InternetRetailer reviewed the results here (though ironically they didn't include a link to the study, and there is no place to leave any comments).

Most interesting to me personally was the strong correlation between clicking and viewing/looking, which I'll blog about tomorrow.

Once you've read the study, give us a call to discuss how we can help optimize the conversion rates of your webpages, landing pages, and emails.

Yahoo Search Assist Uses Eyetools Eyetracking to Optimize Design Based on Eyes and Where People Look

2007-10-03T12:02:00-06:00

You can check out the CBS news video at http://cbs5.com/video/?id=27290@kpix.dayport.com (alternately, try http://cbs5.com/video/ and search for "yahoo search" if the video doesn't load)

About 1 minute into the video, Yahoo shows an eyetracking heatmap generated by Eyetools software and talks about how Yahoo used eyetracking data/heatmaps to optimize the Search Assist design. They're calling it "the biggest consumer improvement to its search engine... ever".

(Begin self promotion: contact us if you'd like to optimize your webpages, landing pages, and emails. We've helped large and small companies; we can help you.)

Common Email Layouts: B2C Electronics Template

2007-09-17T12:18:00-06:00

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

We test a lot of emails at Eyetools... newsletters, B2C, B2B, membership correspondence, etc. One of the more common layouts we see used by large retailers is a print-advertisement style product layout. In general, these templates never test particularly well. We have been using one of these emails as our simple report example for a while now. I thought the report content might be of interest to blog readers, so here it is. If there are questions regarding the results, please let me know.

The PDF of this sample report can be downloaded here .

Note: This is a brand modified sample The email was received through a Fortune500 retail company’s opt-in email list. The branding was removed, but basic layout and graphical elements were retained. The analysis has been kept simple, but shows the benefit of even a quick eye tracking study.

____________________________________________________

Eyetools Sample Email Report

Overview

Number of participants: 17
Demographic: General
Average viewing time: 14.6 sec
Number of people who clicked: 1

Diagnosis

This email performed at a suboptimal level. The majority of viewing was concentrated on the text of the top two sections (“24” and “CP Challenge”)

The layout of this email does not guide viewers eyes effectively through the entire email. The most dramatic improvements in viewing would likely be seen if the layout of the main content area were restructured.

Improved copy in the top 33% of the page will improve read through in these sections and may increase scrolling behavior. Copy improvements in the lower 66% of the page will have little or no effect on read through.

Critical Messaging

The words and images highlighted in the red/yellow areas define the "window of opportunity" this email has to grab its readers. Everything outside of that "window" was not looked at by most people (and if they don't read it, they can't be affected by it ).

If the critical message isn't being read or isn't clear, then focus initially on rewriting the areas with the highest concentrations of reading (the red, then orange, then yellow areas).

Diagnosis

The message read by most people (at least 60%) was:

Company Logo

“24 Days of HD… Instant… Last Chance”

“Are you ready … the CP challenge … with… 1/29”

“Watch”

The majority of viewers did not get a cohesive message which included a specific sales pitch or call to action. If this page layout is maintained, improved copywriting is vital to improving read through in each of the top section of the page.

Did They Scroll?

The red lines show where each person
stopped scrolling. It is a myth that everything has to be above the fold, but data has shown that clutter and bad design will greatly reduce scrolling and visual hotspots below the fold.

Diagnosis

Most people are scrolling, which is good. This means that this email has the potential to do even better.

However, the 33% that stopped scrolling early in the email, did so before reaching the individual sale item listings. The top 33% of this email is comprised of 4 major horizontal elements, each with a “banner ad” composition. Viewers skimmed the ads, becoming less interested, and less patient at each subsequent section. Much of this result is due to poor copywriting (See “Critical Messaging”).

In the page structure at the top of this email, viewing is helped by the fact that each section heading is aligned on approximately the same vertical axis. However, as soon as the 3 column format is introduced, common viewing areas decrease dramatically.

Improving the structure and copy in the top section of this email will likely result in increased scrolling by a larger percentage of viewers.

Identifying Design vs. Text/Copy Problems

The green and blue areas highlight those areas read by people who engaged the email more. Because the blue areas indicate where viewers read content quickly, the placement of important text becomes increasingly crucial, particularly in areas below the “fold ” (the yellow dotted line).

Broadly speaking, if a critical area does not have a strong hotspot (orange/red) on it then The design is not guiding the users’ eyes effectively. If, however, a hotspot exists and users are starting to read the text but do not get to the critical messaging, then the area has a copy/text problem.

Diagnosis

Poor read through in the top section of this email is due to poor copy. The heading are high contrast and catch the viewer as they scan the page. However, the first 2-3 words or each headline are relatively uninformative (i.e. “Are you ready”, “Watch the”).

A 3 or more column layout is generally suboptimal for viewing, especially in an email. In this email 80% of participants ignored the right most product column completely. When viewing this email, participants selected one of the 3 vertical columns and skimmed downward. This proved problematic for sale items spanning 2 columns.
In the lower page structure of this email, the product pictures most effectively caught the eye of participants. The outlines around each product primarily disrupted visual flow by creating mini “banner ads”. When viewers see many small distinct units, they are more apt to view one well, and skip several others (even along the same vertical or horizontal axis).

The “Tax Center” section near the bottom of the email was most effective due to it’s large, informative header. This element performed surprisingly well.

User Feedback

User feedback was not collected on this email because it was run only for sample purposes.

But What Does It All Mean? Understanding Eye-Tracking Results (Part 5)

2007-09-10T13:52:00-06:00

Part V: Time and the Heatmap

Series topics:

Part 1: Misinterpreting the data (intro article)

Part 2: What can you learn from eye tracking data?

Part 3: What is a heatmap... really?

Part 4: What is a scan path?

Part 5: Time and the heatmap

In my previous post, I mentioned that heatmaps do not have a time component. Several people have asked me to discuss this topic in a little more detail, so here we go.

Important point #1:

A heatmap represents which content was seen by a group of participants. A heatmap helps to answer the questions “Where did users look?” and “Where didn’t users look?”

Important point #2:

If you are analyzing a heatmap, you are momentarily saying “Ok, in this instant we don’t care how long people looked at things, we just want to know what they saw.”

A heatmap does not answer the questions:

• How long did someone look at my page or page element?
• Did users look away and look back?

To further clarify these points, here’s a general overview of how a heatmap is created (click illustrations for a larger view):

Step 1: Collect data

A single participant views a web page. We record her eye movements as she browses. This gives us data which can be represented in a gaze replay animation.

Now imagine that the animation is composed of a stack of stills, just like a flip book. Each page of our eye tracking “flipbook” contains the X,Y, and Time coordinates of a single fixation.

Step 2: Collapse individual data sets along the t-dimension

Keep imaging our eyetracking data as a flipbook (3D data structure). Now we will collapse the stack along the time axis. In its most basic form, the calculation will take the area of a web page and note every location where the participant fixated. By collapsing the time dimension, we remove it from all further calculations (poof!)

This means that someone who fixated the center of a page for 100ms will end up with the same fixation summary as someone who stared at the center of the page for an extended period of time.

Of course, the algorithm for doing this computation is more complex than the example I just presented. Any heatmapping algorithm should take into account peripheral vision, microsaccades, blinks, fixation duration, “bad data”, ocular drift, dynamic page behavior, etc. For now let’s continue with the simplified example.

Steps #1 and #2 are completed for, oh, say 15 people total. This gives us 15 individual fixation summary plots.

Step #3: Compute an average viewing value for each pixel of the webpage

Again the algorithm which handles this step is more complex than what is presented here, but the basic idea is…

For every pixel of a web page, the system asks “how many people saw this pixel?” If 10 people saw the pixel out of a group of 15, then the algorithm says “66% percent of people saw this pixel… color it yellow on the plot.”

This averaging algorithm outputs a heatmap showing what percentage of participants saw each page element. Handling the data in this way keeps any single individual from biasing heatmap percentages. For example, imagine that 14 people only looked at the center of a page, and 1 person looked at the entire area of the page. Even though 1 participant viewed a much larger area than anyone else (and probably spend a goodly amount of time doing it), she still only represents 6.7% of the 15 person group. The resulting heatmap would then show that 100% of people fixated the center of the screen, and less than 10% looked elsewhere.

Other questions that have come up:

If you make a heatmap from only the first 10 seconds of viewing, doesn’t that add a time component to the heatmap?
The answer is no. The method for computing a heatmap is the same no matter how large the time sample used. When you slice for specific time intervals, you are just selecting a specific group of fixations to include in the calculation. The resulting heatmap still has no time component.
Are heatmaps created from time slices more valid or informative than those created from full experiment sessions?
I suppose that depends on the kind of information you want to get from the plot. If you want to see where people looked in the first 10 seconds, a time slice heatmap is appropriate. If you are trying to understand an order for page element viewing, a heatmap is probably the wrong analysis tool. If you want to see where people are looking over their entire experience with the page, a full session heatmap is the way to go.

This is the last planned installment of our “But what does it all mean?” series. However, the discussion is still open, so if anyone is interested in other topics, just let me know.

Article by Teresa Hernandez - Eyetools, Inc.
Illustrations by Boyd Richard - Eyetools, Inc.

But What Does It All Mean? Understanding Eye-Tracking Results (Part 4)

2007-09-06T10:51:00-06:00

Part IV: What is a scan path?

Series topics:

Part 1: Misinterpreting the data (intro article)

Part 2: What can you learn from eye tracking data?

Part 3: What is a heatmap... really?

Part 4: What is a scan path?

Part 5: Time and the heatmap

I believe I referred to “scan paths” or “fixation patterns” in earlier entries. Understanding scan paths are critical to interpreting eye movement results.

A scan path is a sequence of eye fixations made when someone samples a visual scene. Put simply, a scan path is the path our eyes follow when looking at an image.

One scan path image shows the sequence of fixations made by a single user. Please note that individual fixation patterns are very noisy. However, if you look at a number of these traces, patterns can emerge. What we look for in individual scan paths are “orderly viewing patterns”. In other words, we try to determine whether or not a person’s order of fixation follows a logical flow through a page.

Sample email heatmap (15 participants) and scan path.

At Eyetools, we produce scan path images which look like the image to the right. A key to this can be found on our website.

Qualitative analysis of scan path patterns is critical to any (usability targeted) eye-tracking study. Scan paths can be especially useful when presenting to design, marketing, and usability groups. They very effectively illustrate how individual users are navigating the page. However, when doing your basic analysis, experience and a working knowledge of eye movement/scene search literature will get you the most reliable read from these results.

There are many ways to discuss gaze traces.

Here are just a few examples of the imagery I've found works well when explaining traces:

Think of view flow as a stream. Are users flowing smoothly and unhindered through page content? Are things like ads or section breaks helping to guide the eye, or is the design placing a big boulder in the stream forcing users to detour around a section?

Is there a "spaghetti effect"? Do many individual scan path images look as though someone dropped a handful of spaghetti on the page? (splat!) If users are searching a page at random, they are probably lost and aren't internalizing the message your page is trying to convey (at least not in the most efficient manner).

Does viewing suffer from a "pendulum effect"? Do viewers use a page element as an anchor point and oscillate back and forth in multiple directions? (Think Foucault's Pendulum) This pattern can result in decreased read-though of content, and has a number of other implications. However, the severity of this problem really depends on the individual page content, design/client priorities, etc.

From this point on, any number of other metrics can be considered for data analysis. The data you choose to examine more closely all depends on what you want to learn from your study.

Continuing the Discussion: Methods and More

A note on software:

At Eyetools, we use in-house software to analyze our data. This has allowed us to develop tools that many commercial software systems don't readily provide. I'm not entirely familiar with the limitations of commercial and open source tools, but I assume that a large portion of stage 1 (heatmap analysis) and stage 2 (qualitative scan path analysis) is very common place.

But regardless of what kind of analysis algorithms you use (commercial, in-house, open source, etc.) it's important for the experimenter to have a solid understanding of eye movement terminology, experimental methodologies, and eye tracking algorithms. After all, it helps to know (1) what you are actually measuring with an eyetracker, and (2) what the measurements mean, and (3) what the limitations of your hardware and software are. (Well, that's true in any field isn't it?)

A note on methodology:

Task instructions and participant preparation (priming) are important concerns in any behavioral or survey style study. Eye-tracking is no different. Rather than discuss methods at length, I’ll just pop in some pointers to other discussions and resources.

• [pdf] Granka, L and Rodden, K (2006). Incorporating Eyetracking into User Studies at Google. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
• [blog] Matteo Penzo's Introduction to Eyetracking: Seeing Through Your Users’ Eyes
• Suman, S and Bradburn, NM (1983). Asking Questions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

But What Does It All Mean? Understanding Eye-Tracking Results (Part 3)

2007-09-04T09:28:00-06:00

Part III: What is a heatmap… really?

Series topics:

Part 1: Misinterpreting the data (intro article)
Part 2: What can you learn from eye tracking data?
Part 3: What is a heatmap... really?
Part 4: What is a scan path?
Part 5: Time and the heatmap

A heatmap can be defined several different ways, but as they say, all roads lead to Rome. I find the 2 most useful ways of describing a heatmap are:

1 – A heatmap is an aggregate representation showing what areas a group of people fixated when viewing a webpage or email. The image shows where the sample group looked or didn’t look. Well produced heatmaps should also take into account a reasonable percentage of peripheral vision.

And

2 – A heatmap is a probability map which tells you what page content users are most likely to see. This is only true when the number of individual sessions used to create the heatmap is large enough. At Eyetools, we recommend 15 people in most cases. This number is based on what we have found gets our clients reliable results and the best cost-benefit ratio (bang for their buck).

Brand modified sample email. 17 participants.

Heatmaps are striking images, and very informative analysis tools. However, they are just the tip of the iceberg when performing a proper analysis of eye movement data. This is why companies who specialize in eye-tracking research have begun popping up.

What can’t you learn from a single heatmap?

• View order. Are users scanning the page in the most efficient way possible? Are they forming a coherent message or are they lost? Sometimes a heatmap can be covered in "hot spots" but read through was very low. More analysis is needed.

• Copy vs. Layout Problems. Heatmaps can help experimenters determine whether a page’s layout or copy is responsible for decreased viewing. However, further analysis is needed to make a complete diagnosis.

• How to improve page performance. This is really knowledge that can only be gained through experience. Viewing patterns can be affected by a number of different factors. Heatmaps can help you to understand if there is a problem, but not how to specifically go about making changes. (That’s why we're here. Please excuse the shameless plug.)

• Variability. By definition heatmaps do not have a measure of variability (error bar) associated with them. I have a few thoughts, and (some rather interesting findings) about the variability in heatmaps and other eye-tracking metrics, but that is another discussion all together. If anyone is particularly interested in discussing analysis at this level, let me know.

• Time Components. Heatmaps do not have a time component. Time spent looking at a page element, or the page as a whole, is not represented at the heatmap level.

But What Does It All Mean? Understanding Eye-Tracking Results (Part 2)

2007-08-30T13:40:00-06:00

Part II: What can you learn from eye-tracking data?

Series topics:

Part 1: Misinterpreting the data (intro article)
Part 2: What can you learn from eye tracking data?
Part 3: What is a heatmap... really?
Part 4: What is a scan path?
Part 5: Time and the heatmap

People often ask me what exactly they can learn from eye tracking. I have a short version answer which is:

We track:

• Where people look
• Where people click
• What people ignore
• And we discover why they decide to click ...or not click.

Why does it work?

• Your eyes are hardwired into your brain and the eyes cannot lie.
• Eyes can’t be "put down" like a mouse between clicks.
• Eyes + clicks + subjective questions give a comprehensive view into the user experience.

This explanation is pretty common, but in reality, you can gain much more insight into the user experience from these kinds of studies. Some advantages of eye tracking studies include:

• Biometric measurements are more accurate than user feedback. User feedback is invaluable, but notoriously unreliable. Feedback regarding feelings, opinions, etc. must be acquired through survey methods. However, measuring natural behavior gives a much more accurate picture of a user’s immediate experience than asking them after the task is complete.

• Eye-tracking data can be used to accurately predict user feedback. This is true for questions regarding ease of use, ease of navigation, etc. All of these items also affect user confidence in the site and company.

• Site navigation patterns can be mapped. For instance, we can map out common navigation paths from a homepage to an interior page, and can begin to understand why some are being used more than others.

• Results are representative of a “natural work environment”. In other words, eye tracking does not require that a moderator be in the room with the user. Obviously the studies are done in a controlled environment, but not having other people in the room makes the experience very comfortable for users.

• Viewing order of pages and page elements can be established. We begin to understand what information is most likely to be seen/missed by users, and in what order. For example, are users viewing a “Free Trial” offer 1st or 15th when seeing the page? Now you can know.

• DHTML elements can be tracked separately. The visual effectiveness and frequency of use of DHTML elements can be studied.

• Short iterative testing can also be implemented. Because we can test prototypes (yes, even jpeg mock-ups), short eye tracking tests can be used to modify designs quickly. This kind of testing is not a standard use of eye-tracking, but is proving to be very effective.

• Page element placement, copy, etc effects can be ranked. Should I change my header text? Move a menu to the right rail? Change the icon size or background? Certain layout changes can be ranked as to how much effect they will have on viewing patterns.

One point to keep in mind is that eye-tracking, like all other usability tests, is not going to provide all of the answers by itself. Eye-tracking is a valuable and powerful tool when implemented alone. But if you want the best over all picture, use it in conjunction with other usability tests, and as a part of an iterative process.

Does eye tracking measure visual attention?

Yes, eye tracking can estimate the areas of an interface which receive visual attention. The “bouncing around” of the eye trace shown in the video is created by a series of fast eye movements called saccades. When your brain is planning an eye movement, it shifts covert attention to the eye’s destination [ 1]. The attentional shift and saccade movement have been shown to be inseparable [ 2 ]. And, of course, once you fixate something, your visual system starts processing the image.

Does this mean that we remember 100% of everything we fixated on a screen? Definitely not. Our brains can suppress images, or use the visual signal to inform any number of low level cognitive functions. Does it mean that what we fixated has had an opportunity to directly affect our experience with an interface? Absolutely.

Gaze trace information helps us to understand the areas of a page which most helped to form a user's visual experience with the site or email.

References:

Here's an EXELLENT introduction to eye tracking and usability:
Matteo Penzo's Introduction to Eyetracking: Seeing Through Your Users’ Eyes

[1] Shipp S. (2004) The brain circuitry of attention. Trends Cogn Sci. 8, 223-30.
[2] Peterson MS, Kramer AF, Irwin DE. (2004) Covert shifts of attention precede involuntary eye movements. Percept Psychophys. 66, 398-405.
[ref] Liversedge SP, Findlay JM. (2000) Saccadic eye movements and cognition. Trends Cogn Sci. 4, 6-14.

But What Does It All Mean? Understanding Eye-Tracking Results (Part 1)

2007-08-28T13:52:00-06:00

Part I: Misinterpreting the data

Series topics:

Part 1: Misinterpreting the data (intro article)
Part 2: What can you learn from eye tracking data?
Part 3: What is a heatmap... really?
Part 4: What is a scan path?
Part 5: Time and the heatmap

In 2000, the Poynter Institute released their first study analyzing how users view online news websites. Yet, 7 years after eye-tracking made this first major impression on the usability and marketing industries, there still seems to be a lot of confusion over what eye-tracking data can actually tell you about how users interact with your site.

Vague descriptions of methodologies and misinterpretation of eye-tracking data has lead to skepticism about the validity of eye-tracking in usability and marketing research.

Getting answers to common questions

In this next series of blog entries, I thought I’d take a shot at dispelling some small fraction of the confusion surrounding eye-tracking research. Over the next few weeks I’ll address some recurring questions I get about our research, and the optimal use of eye-tracking studies.

Questions like:

• What is a heatmap… really?
• How to read a scan path… and what is a scan path?
• How do you get the most out of eye-tracking analysis? (What many commercial software packages won’t tell you)
• Basic eye movement terminology and why is it important when interpreting results?

Bad web design is not a good thing.

Just to start us off, I thought I’d share one of my favorite misinterpretations of eye-tracking data. This originally appeared in a blog entry last year:

I think web surfing is a hunting activity. The eye is looking for anamolies, for things that don't belong. (That might be why the word anomaly, spelled wrong in the previous sentence, got your focus). […] One of the takeaways is that bad web design might actually be a good thing! Slightly bad design isn't familiar. It's off. It demands attention. (Very bad design demands the 'back' button, of course).

What I learned from eyetracking -- Seth Godin

I have a love/hate relationship with Seth Godin’s article. I love it because it is a perfect cautionary tale about why we should take the time to stop and understand data. Quick assumptions (especially based on eye-movement recordings) can lead to some surprising conclusions. This erroneous interpretation has gotten quite a bit of attention, and has even been mentioned in meetings I’ve had with several designers.

So just a few notes to get us started:

• Bad web design does not encourage viewer attention. It discourages the user from making an effort to understand web content, and only succeeds in getting users lost and frustrated.

• Novel interface design does change looking patterns. However, as long as a website or email is well designed and intuitive, users will learn to navigate it quickly.

• Individual search patterns should almost never be considered alone. The video is interesting and fun to watch, but cannot by itself give useful information about how a broad range of people view the site.

• Individual gaze plot data is always noisy. This is because we normally move our eye 3 times a second. A group of gaze plots must be examined to find patterns in page viewing.

Useful References:

Poynter Studies
2005 Enquiro, Eyetools, Did-It Study -- Google

Eyetracking Circuit City's Email Template

2007-07-18T23:04:00-06:00

Many companies’ email templates aren’t working and they don’t know it.
Companies can know before they launch a campaign that there is a problem.
Once companies know there is a problem, they can start to fix it.

Today we'll focus on a Circuit City email as an example, and we'll be making the following assumptions:

People can’t click on what they don’t see, so…
It’s better to have more products seen than less.
It’s better to have your lead promo and branding seen than not.
Circuit City is a good store (I shop there!), so we’re talking about their email, not them.

So, let’s begin!

What if you knew before you launched that…

“What most people see” eyemaps (eyetracking heatmaps) visualize what more than 60% of people focused on. It’s important that most people see your main message.

> The majority of products listed will NOT be seen by most people
> Branding will be missed by over half of the readers
> Tagline won’t be read by 80% of people
> Value Proposition will be missed by 80% of people
> Call To Action will be missed by 90%
> “Free shipping” offer (which is highlighted in red) will be missed by half

...would this be an “effective” email you would want to launch? (or would you want to fix it before you launch?)

Circuit City’s email template suffers from low viewing due to template design flaws. The viewing percentages will vary somewhat month to month as they promote different products, but without a design change their overall viewing will be pretty consistently like this.

So the question is, given the low viewing of their products, how much money is this company wasting each month in lost sales opportunity?

Test your own material | About Eyetools

Designers Need Feedback - Better Visual Feedback Produces Better Results

2007-03-16T14:49:00-06:00

Frankly, it's not fully fair that clients ask designers to improve the client's metrics, to improve conversion rates, and increase their revenue WITHOUT the designer having some form of feedback mechanism that can be used to optimize design BEFORE it is launched to the public.

This is clearly a different way of looking at the situation. But I think it is appropriate.

I know as a fact that designers can produce more effective material when they are provided direct, objective feedback on the effect of their design decisions (typically ranging from 42% to 300% increases in conversion rate for simple designs, and up to 2000% increases for more involved web pages) than when they are instead forced to just rely on A/B split tests using click-based metrics. Getting feedback from launching a new design and watching click-throughs go up, down, or not do much of anything is really too late and isn't very informative (so 15 different things were changed in the redesign... which one was responsible for the clicks going up or down???)

We work with a lot of agencies and design firms, and definitely want to work with more, but we've seen a number of end-clients shoot down the design firm's recommendation to make use of eyetracking feedback because the client instead expects the designers to just do a great job no matter what.

Version 2: Google "Golden Triangle" Eyetracking Search Report

2006-11-09T23:42:00-07:00

Enquiro has poured over Eyetools eyetracking data collected on Yahoo, MSN, and Google to produce a report that you can buy here, which updates the information on Search Results that we put together with them originally. Enjoy!

Eyetools in Wall Street Journal: Benefits of Heatmap Testing for IBM/Ogilvy/Cisco

2006-07-17T12:51:00-06:00

We're in the Wall Street Journal! (Page B7, and online) Article excerpts:

"Firms Like IBM Are Using Eye-Tracking Technology To Help Redesign Messages"

"IBM says that since starting to use heatmapping in email tests early last year, it has made some simple changes in email design that have led to major improvements in responses from customers. ... click-through rates jumped 60%"

The WSJ article talks about using heatmapping/eyetracking to improve emails. IBM and Cisco did their testing via Ogilvy, who offers our heatmapping/eyetracking testing.

"Cisco, which did a round of email-newsletter (Eyetools) testing last week, says it has found a way to increase the odds of consumers reading more of an email."

From "WSJ.com - Marketers Give Email Another Look", July 17, 2006.

Eyetools in AdAge (About Ogilvy Using Our Eyetracking for Its Email Clients)

2005-07-06T14:14:00-06:00

AdAge wrote about Ogilvy optimizing emails with heatmaps and eyetracking.

This is an Eyetools 'heatmap' of the hottest spots of attention on one email. Click to see larger eyetracking image.

Ogilvy's director of email campaigns, Jeanniey Mullen sees strategic benefit in adding objective feedback/testing into their design process -- they want to always improve the quality delivered to their end-clients.

Ogilvy picked Eyetools as their email testing supplier because of our speed and experience in the space. We're proud of this!

Google Eyetracking Study of Search Results -- on Sale

2005-07-05T14:48:00-06:00

You can buy the report quickly and easily.

This report analyzes how different Google ranking and positions increase visibility and click-throughs, and it is finally available for sale! (read SearchEngineWatch's summary).

A lot of work went into this study. The findings are interesting and numerous.

Testing & Optimizing Email Campaigns

2005-05-23T13:38:00-06:00

Interest in eyetracking heatmaps on email and e-newsletters seems to be increasing. So far the results have been intriguing -- we've been helping several very large companies communicate their message more quickly and directly to their existing clients.

Branding Effectiveness: Sports Illustrated & FootAction

2005-05-20T09:58:00-06:00

If your goal is branding, you'd better make sure they see the brand!

A full write-up of this example (which is initially a little heavy on the Eyetools self-promotion since this was a corporate piece), follows...

Eyetools is uniquely suited to efficiently assess the probability if an advertisement’s design will successfully enhance branding by measuring what people actually look at in an advertisement. Here we compare two examples to measure the logo’s ability to impact the viewer and thereby lift the brand.

An example: Which Branding is Better?

If you look at these two examples from print advertising, we can make a dramatic comparison between their respective effectiveness. They were shown to the same group of people. They are both sports related. Their creative objectives are similar. They both seek to capture action and energy in their imagery. And yet, their performance is dramatically different.

Good Branding

In the hockey example, the viewers glance at the player to left, and then the group collectively glances to the Sports Illustrated logo on the goalie’s right leg with sufficient concentration to confirm that the majority of the group saw the logo and saw it as one of the initial elements to draw the group’s attention. If an advertisement can grab only a second or two of a person’s attention as it flies by on a bill board or is flipped past in a magazine, ensuring that the viewer notices the name or logo of the advertiser is a basic requirement of success for that ad. To top it off, the complete subtlety of the placement of the Sports Illustrated logo is sublime. By all accounts, this ad demonstrates superb ability to lift the brand of Sports Illustrated.

Bad Branding

By contrast, the ad on the bottom is not so successful. While similarly inspired, the ad below fails to direct visual traffic as successfully at the Sports Illustrated ad. First, the gaze of the group is drawn into the central image. By splitting the image into quadrants with an overlaid Zone of Interest on the hotspot in the center, we can see that the group predominantly glances around the image (1-4), finally settling on the region highlighted by the hotspot (5). Only then does the group chance a glance in the direction of the logo, but even then, fails to look directly on the logo (6), an as a result the maximum exposure they get to the brand is "FOOT". Not only are the concentrations of viewing lower than on the Sports Illustrated ad, but this company — FOOTACTION — does not have a logo that stands out in one’s peripheral vision, as would an Intel or a Pepsi logo.

To add insult to injury, of those of the group who glance from logo over to the tag line that runs up the left side of the image, only one person actually attempts to read the message. The rest of those who look to that image give the line one or two glances then quit — not enough to read a sentence running vertically as this one is.

Wasting Money on Content in Visual Dead Zones

2005-03-19T23:17:00-07:00

E*Trade's homepage from January 2001

Visual dead zones reduced E*Trade's ability to communicate with their target customers, because low percentages of people read their promotional content.

This is an old story*, but one of my favorites because it illustrates an important point, yet was really fun:

We eyetracked E*Trade's homepage and then inserted gibberish into it to illustrate that content in a "visual dead zone" doesn't get read and might as well not exist.

To identify parts of E*Trade's homepage that weren't being viewed, we collected eyetrack data on just 4 people (not too many people, eh?) as they surfed E*Trade's website to decide for themselves whether they wanted to sign up for E*Trade's services. We found that about 1/5 of the screen real estate above the fold was being wasted, so once we located un-viewed areas, we came up with gibberish to replace the existing text on a cached version of their homepage (this was a lot of fun!).

Examples of the gibberish tested on E*Trade's homepage:

FDIC distrusts us * No Bank Quality * Will Lose Value
Not ready to event an insurance? Tax group of our manager discussion free of funds.
Get $25 to close an E*Trade Bank Money Market Plus Advice! Tax a gear cool and ATM access!
...and more

Then, we re-tested the modified homepage in the lab. As a secondary test, we also sent it out to a bunch of people who we didn't eyetrack. After people had seen the page while evaluating whether they were interested in signing up for E*Trade's services, we asked them if there was anything strange about the homepage. Only 1 in 25 people noticed!

The moral of the story is, if you wish to optimize your content: If content on your webpage is in a visual dead zone, it might as well not exist. People can't click on what they don't see. Money and time spent on content in a visual dead zone is wasted.

* This is an old E*Trade website -- we ran this test in January 2001. Since then, E*Trade has become a client, and is very proactive in working to improve the experience for their customers.

Guiding a Website Redesign With Eyetracking -- an Eyetools Case-Study

2005-03-17T15:21:00-07:00

A PDF of a homepage redesign using Eyetools eyetracking can be found here (4 pages, 905 K, images of a site before/after, plus Eyetools heatmaps).

Several people have asked how eyetracking can be used for homepage optimization, and they wanted more details regarding using eyetracking to guide the redesign of a website (with large-size images of the before and after websites + eye data). So, here it is!

Note: this is a full detailed version of a short blog entry I made earlier.

Eyetracking Google Search Results -- Eyetools Research (This One Should Help With Search Engine Optimization (SEO/SEM) Planning).

2005-03-11T01:50:00-07:00

Eyetools Heatmap of people searching on
Google Search Results

(How to interpret an Eyetools heatmap)

New Eyetools EyeTracking Study verifies the importance of page position and rank in both Organic and Pay-per-click search results for visibility and click through in Google.

(PRWEB) -- A joint eye tracking study conducted by eye tracking firm Eyetools and search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it.com has shown that the vast majority of eye tracking activity during a search happens in a triangle at the top of the search results page indicating that the areas of maximum interest create a "golden triangle."

These eyetracking results apply to Search Engine Optimization and Marketing.

Update:

People don't always realize that they can optimize their landing pages using eyetracking to better convert their traffic into sales. If you're paying for traffic, you can make a huge improvement in ROI by optimizing landing pages (30% boost in sales!).

CSS Zen Garden -- an Eyetools Eyetracking Analysis

2005-02-28T17:15:00-07:00

Design decisions affect what people read. The CSS Zen Garden always has the same content but different visual treatments -- and you can see how this affects reading.

Original homepage (live site)	Version 145 (live site)
Same content, different visual treatments

CSS Zen Garden is a beautiful place -- it demonstrates the power of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and the flexibility of design because the content is always the same but the visual treatments are very creative and very different! Here are two examples (stay tuned for more in the future).

Notice that version 145 has great use of sub-heads and increased reading of the paragraphs below them relative to the original homepage.

The navigation bar on Version 145 is viewed and clicked more.

Also the wider column gets less reading across the width of the page on the original homepage. You can see people start to read and then stop.

Is the Washington Post Wasting Money on the Bottom Half of Their Homepage?

2005-02-24T02:27:00-07:00

My recent analysis of Washington Post's homepage points out that the weak design of the bottom half of their page reduces reading. I received a comment urging me to tie the findings to actual revenue impact, so here goes!

Content costs money for the Washington Post to provide — they have to pay their reporters to generate it, their IT people to put it on the site, and their ISP for bandwidth usage.

If people decide not to read a piece of news because they're not interested, then that's fine. But if potentially-interested people don't see entire sections of content because of a design flaw, then they lose money, and their brand is negatively impacted — it will appear to people that the site offers less content than it actually does, and they will spend less time on the site.

Do they realize they are suffering financially? Probably not... they probably think it's "normal" to have low click-throughs from content below the fold. Just looking at their click logs, they wouldn't be able to realize that potentially-interested people never received the opportunity to click.

The New Washington Post Homepage Design -- an Eyetools Eyetracking Analysis

2005-02-22T18:11:00-07:00

Eyetools Heatmap of people reading
the new Washington Post homepage
(launched February 15, 2005)

Last week, the Washington Post announced a new homepag, and here is the data showing how it performs: an Eyetools Heatmap of a group of 19 new visitors viewing the new page; along with what we can learn from its design.

Fast summary:

Top half of page — good readable design.
Bottom half of page — bad example of line-spacing and white-space discourages reading.

Note: This entry is not an exhaustive report, instead it's a quick sample of things! Despite that, this entry is still too long by most weblog standards — there's always so much to be said about the data... alas.

Learn from Washington Post's successes

Main content area — good readable design. It is heavily viewed and read (more so than some other news sites). Good use of line-spacing and white-space. People even scroll. Job well done!

Learn from Washington Post's mistakes

Bottom half of page — ineffective line-height spacing and lack of white-space reduce reading. Most of the content is being missed and there is no consistent guidance of eyes to section headings.

Opportunities to communicate value to visitors is greatly reduced in this area. We've seen other websites do a better job.

Advertising

The ads changed for each person, so numbers are averaged and are not tied to specific creatives. The numbers reported are pretty typical, in our experience, for sites of this kind. It's worth noting that we measure what is happening with advertising and photos with statistics rather than relying on the heatmap (email me if you want to know why, and maybe I'll write-up an entry about it).

Masthead ad — 32% of visitors saw it, looking at it on average 1.2 times, for a total time of 0.7 seconds. On average, it was seen 28.5 seconds after the page loaded.

Cube ad — 79% of visitors saw it, looking at it on average 2 times (each time for approximately 1 second), for a total time of 2.1 seconds. On average, it was seen 18.7 seconds after the page loaded.

Clearly there is a more we could say about advertising effectiveness, but not today — the main point of this entry is about design.

A final note about this type of research

Getting this type of data isn't difficult or expensive. Giving direct visual eyetracking feedback to designers is a great thing because it completes the creative design loop — designers already utilize visual design, fonts, background colors, and spacing with the intention of effectively guiding visitors' eyes, and eyetracking data introduces feedback into that system.

How Eyetracking Helps Website Redesigns: an Eyetools Case-Study

2005-02-21T15:26:00-07:00

Client realizes 10x increase in click-throughs after redesigning a homepage guided by three Eyetools mini-studies.
Test #1 of Existing (old) Page	Test #2 of Prototypes	Test #3 of (new) "Best practices" Page	Launch
Most content wasn't seen. Most people preferred the competition.	3 prototypes generated based on data from test #1. Prototypes were quickly generated as images (can test image-mock-ups or HTML).	Most successful elements of each prototype from test #2 pulled together into a final prototype. Most content now seen. Most preferred this website over competitor. An entire column of paid-content was added, and was economically successful.	Click-throughs increased by 10x times. Satisfaction increased by double. Faster redesign — entire process took less than 45 days from start to launch (including the three tests) because all the parties involved agreed on what was working and what needed fixing.

Client realizes 10x increase in click-throughs after redesigning a homepage guided by three Eyetools mini-studies.

Test #1 of Existing (old) Page

Test #2 of Prototypes

Test #3 of (new) "Best practices" Page

Launch

Most content wasn't seen.
Most people preferred the competition.

3 prototypes generated based on data from test #1.
Prototypes were quickly generated as images (can test image-mock-ups or HTML).

Most successful elements of each prototype from test #2 pulled together into a final prototype.
Most content now seen.
Most preferred this website over competitor.
An entire column of paid-content was added, and was economically successful.

Click-throughs increased by 10x times.
Satisfaction increased by double.
Faster redesign — entire process took less than 45 days from start to launch (including the three tests) because all the parties involved agreed on what was working and what needed fixing.

A PDF of this homepage redesign using Eyetools eyetracking can be found here (4 pages, 905 K, images of a site before/after, plus Eyetools heatmaps).

Guiding a website redesign with Eyetools eyetracking data offers these advantages:

Objective, visual feedback to your designers and copywriters about what works and what doesn't,
Test before launching — don't launch a mistake that loses traffic,
Remove "opinion-based discussions" (and guess-work) about what is seen.

Blog Analysis and Optimization With Eyetracking -- Or "Oh, Oh, That Blog's Writing Needs Fixing"

2005-02-10T19:33:00-07:00

A historical note regarding this post

A special note about this blog entry and the first comment on it from 'Micro Persuasion' (Steve Rubel): his comment, made back in February 2005, and the resulting traffic that came from his site are in many respects responsible for all of the blogging that occurred in 2005 by Eyetools, and by extension, most of the buzz that got generated around eyetracking as a field in 2005. The spike in traffic based on his one comment and his link to our site made us realize that we had something special we could do with our blog. That year we posted as many interesting eye tracking heatmaps as we could think of and wrote about "eyetracking heatmapping." Now in 2009, "heatmapping" as a term seems standard, but back then it didn't exist, and there wasn't much buzz or discussion about eyetracking back then in the marketing world. 2005 was a great year for Eyetools, and Steve Rubel deserves a lot of credit for starting that, and so it is with a special feeling that we express gratitude to Steve Rubel and his blog. If you haven't ever read Micro Persuasion, then we highly recommend it.

— Greg Edwards, founder, and CTO in 2005, now CEO since 2007

March 3, 2009 at 05:57 PM

This is what happens when you have easy access to eyetracking testing: you start wondering how well you're doing writing about it... and after wondering very briefly, you test it and find that it needs improvement. Alas.

An Eyetools Heatmap of people reading one of our blogs

Our first blog: All that red at the top shows that everyone reads our title and the first 1-line paragraph, but that they start dropping off in the middle of the "story" paragraph (guess the writing wasn't as good as I thought :-) .

The "statistics" section held good information, but only 60% of people read it. Can I do better?

And the "punch line" certainly is getting wasted down there (50% and mostly skimming). No big surprise. Shouldn't have been so egotistical to believe that I could actually hold people's attention ALL the way to the end , but that final point was important, so I'm moving it.

So, I'm going to tweak the text of the original blog and post it as a new one. I've still got a bunch of people who will be coming through for this study so I'll test that as well! Crossing fingers... I'm going to go write the new version now...

Eyetracking a Navigation Bar -- How Many Elements Are Read? Well, It Depends...

2005-02-02T21:01:00-07:00

A historical note regarding this post

Back in 2005, people were talking about how "important it was to have a blog" and so we started one, writing this first entry you see below, which was originally posted on February 2, 2005. But as we posted it, we realized that we (along with most of the world at the time) didn't have any particularly good idea about how blogs should be written. And so we decided to do "eyetracking analysis" on it (it wasn't yet popularly called "eyetracking heatmapping" back then, since the term "heatmapping" was only used by us with clients and didn't start to grab hold in the marketing world until July of 2005 when Jeanniey Mullen wrote about us in AdAge (thank you, Jeanniey)). You can see the blog entry where we posted the eyetracking results of how people read this entry (which back then didn't have this comment on it, of course). And, if you check out the comments on that blog entry, you will see the original comment and link by Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion that truly launched this blog into the public eye, and resulted in eyetracking becoming a common word and tool in the marketing world. Now, jump back to 2005, and read the blog entry below...

— Greg Edwards, founder, and CTO in 2005, now CEO since 2007

This right-hand navigation bar was the final motivator that got this blog started. When I first saw it, it wasn't doing so great.

People interacted with this nav differently depending on other page elements.

It was on the (old) San Francisco Police Department website, which, some might say, was "cluttered" before the homepage redesign. I know that context plays a big part in how web elements are viewed, but when I saw it in a follow-up study on the (new) re-designed website, I at first thought it was a completely different right nav!

Old Page Design	New Page Design

Eyetools Heatmaps™ showing group viewing trends on each web page ( Eyetools Heatmap Legend )

The behavior on these two identical navs on two different pages was strikingly (and statistically significantly) different: the nav on the new page was clicked by 64% of our test participants as opposed to only 14% on the old website. People looked at the new site's right nav longer, more often, and read more — despite there being no change to the design of the right navigation bar at all.

The moral of the story: A change on one part of the page can impact other, unrelated elements on the page. The right navigation bar was used completely differently on the new re-designed website because the content to the left of it changed.

Oh, the Joy!

2005-02-01T12:48:00-07:00

I love what I do and I believe that understanding visual interaction data (what people look at) can really help people design better websites... yet, other than talking directly with clients, I haven't had an opportunity to talk about all the really cool things that we discover — until now!

This weblog is going to be my vehicle to talk about surprising data I've seen, "rules-of-thumb" that we discover and interesting directions in the research.

I've got some catching up to do (we've done a lot of research so far!) so I imagine that the posts on this site will be relatively frequent once I get a hang of this.

So... here goes!

-Greg