Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Great Free Eye-Tracking Tool

As I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of improving conversions. There are various methods for testing content and appearances of websites, such as A/B testing, heatmaps, videos of your site viewers as well as looking at your analytics and logs. So what about at the design stage? Sometimes if your company has SEO in mind from the beginning, you can start to save valuable time with testing. Sure, A/B testing is a fantastic way of letting your users decide which page they prefer to help in the conversion tunnel, but it can take time for an experiment to run. Real eye-tracking equipment and testing is very expensive, and again, is better with a website already designed. This is where attentionwizard steps in.

SEO home page - Barcelona SEO Blog

Attention wizard allows you to quickly upload any .jpeg file and then creates a pdf eyemap on the image. So this is a great way to see, even at the design phase, if you're getting it right with the calls to actions, etc. The process claims to have a 75% accuracy rate, and having seen other tools at a preview or at an introductory price, I'd have to say that it's good enough as an indicator, and a fantastic addition for any design stage for free.

Check out the first image above, which is my home page for Barcelona SEO. Then check out the below image (click for greater detail).

eyetracking on Home Page - Barcelona SEO Blog

You can see clearly the position that the eye would naturally follow, and the numbers over the lines tell you (the estimated) trajectory of the eye scanning your page. Good news is that people are drawn to the subscribe box, and after quickly looking at the translation flag, move back to reading the text. This reinforces the need for a good site structure, with the majority of users expecting navigation to the left.

Are you looking to improve conversions on your website? Contact me for ideas and a review of your site, or ask about my Barcelona SEO Training sessions.

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