At first glance, the function of an eye tracker seems simplistic — and it is. However, the simple data it collects can lead to important insights you can apply to design, usability, advertising, and more.
What an Eye Tracker Measures
- Where a user looks
- How long a user looks at certain images
- How a user’s gaze travels across a page
What This Data Can Tell Us
A User’s Gaze
Our eyes are an important indicator of our thoughts and feelings. Eye-tracking technology gives you, as a researcher or business owner, a chance to better understand those thoughts and feelings with a simple session in front of a Gazepoint eye tracker.
A user tends to look at effective, attention-grabbing design elements, as well as headings relevant to their objective. By measuring where a user looks, you can measure the performance of different design elements and the relevance of your on-page content.
Research is also advancing to analyze a user’s eye movements, recorded through technology like Gazepoint’s, to better understand their physical health and cognitive development. Eye-tracking technology is already being applied to diagnosing Alzheimer’s, autism spectrum disorders, strabismus, and much more.
A User’s Focus
Another metric gathered by the Gazepoint eye trackers is fixations — points where a user looks at a specific spot for a certain amount of time. Not only will you be able to record the x-y coordinates of where the user was looking, but you can also measure how long they spent looking at each point.
Fixations can indicate elements of a page that a user finds especially interesting or confusing. Most users scan a page with rapid eye movements called saccades to gather information. Maintained focus in one place allows us to gather more detailed information. A user’s first fixation frequently indicates what draws their immediate interest, and from that point on, you’ll need supplementary data to determine whether their fixations are due to engagement or misunderstandings.
User Navigation
You have the opportunity to optimize the organization of your page, ad, or product with information on how a user navigates the original layout. Eye tracking research has already discovered an important shared experience: the F pattern.
Users, sometimes with the exception of older adults, typically scan a page in an F pattern. They devote more focus to elements at the top and left side of a page, and while they may initially read across the entire breadth of the page, that thoroughness degenerates as they scroll down, and users skip mostly from heading to heading or image to image. With eye tracking, you can examine how users interact with your content and place your high-priority items where they will be seen and understood.
Take Advantage of Eye Tracking
Gazepoint eye trackers and eye-tracking software provides the opportunity to use simple, quantitative data for powerful purposes, from faster medical diagnoses to more effective marketing strategies and improved designs for better user experiences. Explore how eye tracking can benefit your organization, and place your order with Gazepoint today.
