Catching Your Reader's Eye

Its obviously important to get someone's attention as quickly as possible when they come to your web site.

Direct marketers have long tried to understand what elements are most important in catching someone's eye so that they continue reading.

Eye Study Research

Extensive "eye flow" research has been conducted in Germany to determine exactly what can be learned from monitoring people as they look at various ad copy and visual presentations.

This research was done with special eye monitoring camera's that can accurately track:

where on a page someone looks how long they look there and various other eye factors

They not only watched the eyes. They also noted emotional reactions, body movement and more.

Their findings reveal some very interesting things that are important to know about. Applying this knowledge to your web site is likely to have positive effects on it.

The Results

What are you looking at?

Some findings make sense while others you probably never considered.

• The greatest visual element you can place on a page is an illustration or graphic. By far people's attention is drawn to that first on a page.

If you think about your own browsing habits you can realize that this is true. For example if you go to a site like cnn.com, you are likely to glance at the photos on the page first.

• The most attention getting pictures are color (versus black and white) and warmer colors beat out cooler ones.

• Pictures with people are looked at before any product shot

• Children get looked at more than adults, while a portrait of someone is more attention getting than a group of people.

• The first thing looked at on a picture? The eyes of a person

The research found that except for a sexually explicit photo, the eyes of a photograph attract the most attention by far.

You didn't happen to notice the eyes for the graphics I used for this article did you?...

Another Secret

I'm curious if you read this caption or not. I have a feeling you did... Captions get read.

Want to know another secret?

You would do well to put captions under your graphics.

We are trained since an early age to read the captions under a photo. Any text you have under there is almost guaranteed to be read by someone looking at the photo.

These are definitely some things to keep in mind when considering the graphics on your web site.

By putting thought into what pictures you are presenting, you are likely to capture the attention of your site visitors much better. Once you have their attention, they are much more receptive to becoming a customer.