8 takeaways from eye tracking studies

Position of key elements on the page, the use of white space, images of people—all help direct visitors’ attention where you want it. Oh, and ditch the banner ads; they aren’t worth the bother.

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When it comes to data, you can’t have enough. Crunching numbers, running tests, poring over metrics, analyzing trends-these all help to build great businesses and terrific websites.

One fascinating field of study of consumer behavior is eye tracking. The information gleaned from eye tracking can help you become a more proficient Web designer, content writer, conversion optimization expert, or online marketer.

I’ve summarized the results of some eye tracking tests so you can start seeing better results in your businesses.

Eye tracking basically measures where people look on a Web page and for how long. Eye tracking data are presented visually, overlaid on the screen that the subjects were looking at, similarly to the image above.

With eye tracking, you can discover where a person looked first, second, third, and so on. You can find out what the user considers to be the most interesting part of the screen and how long he or she looked at certain areas.

Like any powerful data research, eye tracking studies aren’t cheap. The least expensive eye tracking devices cost around $5,000. By analyzing public eye tracking studies, I came up with eight takeaways that can help your online business.

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