I stumbled upon a website for a company that specialises in web usability; they’ve produced a video explaining eye tracking and how you can use the results to gain an insight into how people view your site and whether they are using it as you would expect.
They kindly published this video to YouTube so I could embed in the blog.
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Although this is a promotional video, I thought it was useful because it explains in simple terms why you would want to use eye tracking, and what the resulting maps could indicate.
I also found an interesting report by Eyetrack III with the results for a journalist site. The report outlines some of the main findings and explains some of the conclusions they came to. In this study for example, they found that navigation placed at the top of a homepage rather than side performed best, i.e. it was seen by the highest percentage of test subjects and looked at for the longest period for time.
I wonder which test they need to find out how effective splash pages are…
Nielsen produced a report on eye tracking, some of the resulting statements are expressed as concrete rules – which I wouldn’t agree with – but their reports and articles have some excellent advice which can be used as guidance when planning web pages.
More details about eye tracking
- Visit Etre for more info – and I’d definitely recommend reading their blog, they have some excellent information on the topic… and some cute geek cushions…
- Five Days Five Heatmaps- findings from a study of five major online retail websites
- What I Learned From Eye Tracking – outputs from an eye tracking study conducted for best-selling business author, Seth Godin
- What we saw whan we looked though their eyes – article based on the Eyetrack III reports
- F shaped pattern for reading content – Nielsen report and recommendations.
