How people read online is different from how they read via other mediums, eg, books, magazines, etc. This is known as eye tracking, and, if you’re not familiar with it, you could be missing out on sales and leads. Some simple insight into eye tracking can help you significantly improve your landing page optimization strategies.
What Is Eye Tracking?
Eye tracking is simply the process of documenting where a person is looking as they read a page online, for example. It has been widely adopted by many researchers in various fields (eg, psychology, cognitive linguistics, etc.) to help with things like product design and marketing.
The birth of eye tracking can be traced back to the late 19th century when French ophthalmologist Louis Émile Javal made the observation that when people read, they don’t do so in a “smooth sweeping of the eyes along the text, as previously assumed, but they do so in a series of short stops (called fixations) and quick saccades.”
This caused many to examine and question how people read, eg, which words do their eyes stop on, for how long, when do readers double back to previously seen words, etc.?
How Eye Tracking Can Help Improve Landing Page Optimization
Fast forward to the 21st century; many studies have been conducted on eye tracking in relation to web page design. Following are some findings gleaned by Eyetrack III in a study released by the Poynter Institute that can help you better design your landing pages.
Where prospects look first on a page: This study found that participants most often looked at the upper left-hand part of a page. Then after a bit, they moved to the right. Only after giving a thorough look to these portions of the page did they begin to look further down.
How can you use this information to better optimize your landing page? Put your benefits-oriented offer/information in the upper part of the page. This way, prospects are sure to get – immediately — what you can do for them.
Graphics, Text & Multimedia: Another thing this survey found was that text – as opposed to graphics – won the day with participants. It found specifically that “dominant headlines” are what drew most participants’ attention when they first landed on a page. And, if this headline was in the upper left-hand segment of the page, all the better. Headlines also worked well in the upper right.
How can you use this information to improve your landing page optimization techniques? Simple — scratch the graphics, video and other multi-media you might want to put here and get busy writing a full-fledged, benefits-oriented headline.
These are just two findings from a very limited study on eye tracking. Imagine if you spent some time delving into it a bit more? You could significantly improve your landing page ROI by learning things like page “hotspots,” where to put call to action statements, what to do about graphics, etc.
Find out more about how to use eye-tracking to improve your website.
