Online attention grabbers are not so great at grabbing attention

Retailer assumptions that displaying faces, large text and the word “free” on their websites will draw customer attention may not be correct. Recent analysis from an eye-tracking study by neuroscience artificial intelligence technology provider EyeQuant shows all three of these assumptions are less true than many retailers think.



EyeQuant analysis shows that while faces have a powerful emotional impact on people and human brains probably have a special area dedicated to processing faces, consumers looking at retail websites often spend as much or more time looking at copy as they do at faces. In addition, consumers will often consciously avoid large text, partially due to a natural tendency to avoid overt advertising (such as banner ads) and partially because large text is hard to read. And the word “free” can be a powerful semantic tool, but retailers should not base online marketing on the assumption consumers will look at it.



EyeQuant performed an eye-tracking study with 46 subjects who were purchasing products on 200 AdWords eCommerce pages, and recorded 261,150 fixations in total and users we looking at each webpage for 15 seconds (+/- six sec.) on average. The study was conducted in the Neurobiopsychology Lab at the University of Osnabrueck, Germany.