Metafocus – Online Marketing

I’ve always been very interested in Eyetracking software and a recent post on the Offical Google Blog describes their recent use of eyetracking in researching how people use their Universal Search SERPS. Very interesting stuff. I Was particularly impressed with this video showing how the test users’ eyes will scan across the page and only dwell on text, links or images for a fraction of a second before moving on to something else.

To be honest, the rest of the article confirms what we’ve always known about user behaviour but I’m a sucker for pretty pictures:

Based on eye-tracking studies, we know that people tend to scan the search results in order. They start from the first result and continue down the list until they find a result they consider helpful and click it — or until they decide to refine their query. The heatmap below shows the activity of 34 usability study participants scanning a typical Google results page. The darker the pattern, the more time they spent looking at that part of the page. This pattern suggests that the order in which Google returned the results was successful; most users found what they were looking for among the first two results and they never needed to go further down the page. 

Rich