Heatmap technology has been around for a long time, but did you know it could provide clues on how to improve your website? It can be used by finding out where someone’s eyes spend the most time on a web page – and of course where they are not looking. A company called eyetrackshop did a recent test to see where most people (or their eyeballs) spend the most time on social media sites.
Here are some highlights from their findings that I found on Hubspot.com:
Facebook
People spend the most time looking at the profile picture and the first two posts. EyeTrackShop also shared a metric called fixation order, which is the order in which most people looked at areas of interest on the page. Interestingly, most people on Facebook started by looking at the middle of the page where status updates are posted, then went to the left panel where friends are listed.
Google+
Google+ profile photo doesn't attract as much attention as the Facebook profile photo. The most attention was paid to the name, tagline, and first post. Like on Facebook, someone's Circles was also of interest.
Twitter
The most notable viewing pattern on Twitter is how far down the eye goes on the screen compared to other social networks. Because of the pace at which tweets come through though, this is not surprising, as users are used to scrolling further down the page to see tweet streams.
I do not think that I will be running out and paying for this kind of technology anytime soon, but I do think that we can all learn from their findings:
- Profile pictures do matter.
- And the biggest attention grabbers are within the upper left section of the page – where most of the titles, names and first status updates are listed.
If you want to read more (this is an interesting article about the technology): http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/29863/Heatmaps-Reveal-Where-People-Look-on-Social-Media-Sites-Research.aspx#ixzz1h2R5Gros
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