Using eyetracking to improve page layout design

Posted by Offer Tsuriel on October 26, 2009

According to Lucy Carruthers, usability consultant at Foviance (www.foviance.com), the benefits of eyetracking are as follows:

Usability evaluations typically involve think-aloud protocols -whereby users describe their thoughts and actions as they carry out a set of tasks. This gives the facilitator a good view of the reasoning and driving factors behind the participant’s actions.
However, some types of behaviours are difficult to measure efficiently with think-aloud alone because participants may not be able to verbalize part of their thought processes and/or because some behaviours never reach consciousness.
With eye tracking, however, we can provide insights into web design based on rigorous quantitative measures that are not possible using more traditional usability techniques.

The heatmap example in Figure attached show that the location of headings and content pods will influence where people look. You can also see that the first part of headings and paragraphs are particularly important as visitors scan the page.

 
Bear in mind when evaluating a page template that eyetracking studies of gaze trails typically show that visitors eyes follow this path:

• Start in the centre
• Move to top left
• Move to top centre
• Move down the right column or navigation if present
• Move to the bottom of the page.

However, these general patterns are influenced by the layout.