Wednesday

What are you looking at ?

During the click

Before and after the click , cause and effect. Two major areas of investment, research and interest to ad agencies and clients alike.

The click is the result of a conscious ( driven possible by a subconscious ) action, but what leads us to this point ?

Marketing departments portray the journey of the customer mapping and plotting the ‘ causes and effects ‘ media and previous experiences have on us ultimately to a point in time, be it a supermarket checkout or a webpage.

Insight and the future

Understanding this journey is important, it is an insight as to what brings people to these points and can be the difference between success and failure of a product or brand.

Gaining insight is a key area of growth and an area where increased effort and marketing budgets are focused as media becomes more diverse.

Brands and companies spend millions on market research to gain understanding, books are written on the subconscious elements which affect our decisions all the while pushing for a better understanding of an ever increasingly more complex consumer.

Behavioural targeting in the online space is growing , it monitors your browsing habits and makes connects and assumptions based on your previous history and serves advertising based on these assumptions – not perfect but at least this adds an element of relevance.

The question : Using web analytics gives us insight as to our final decisions, but what made us actually click?

Research again helps, however it does not always tell the full picture, we tend to answer in after thought rather than the there and now.

When I am actually on a web page what triggers me to click on a section or message as opposed to another similarly designed placement ? Does position really dictate success ?

Where is your Focus

Eye tracking used to involve headsets to track the users gaze – not the best way to give a ‘ real world experience ‘ with 10lbs of plastic on your head and wires running down your back.

As always though newer technology which uses infra red laser built into the monitor allows a users gaze to be tracked and monitored, the end result ‘ gaze maps ‘ and ‘ hot spots ‘ maps.

By following a users eye focus it is possible to build maps of where their eyes are spending time on the page ( Hot spots ) and the path of the eyes take over the page ( Gaze map )




maeting " heat map " n tend tecy" marketing" gaze map "

Things to consider

When looking at Heat and Gaze maps you must also take into account our peripheral vision, they are therefore not entirely ‘ pin point accurate ' but act as a guide.

Try this

Find a book or article which has over 15 words on the line, place this in front of you on a table or flat surface and focus on a single word while closing one eye.

Place your thumbs either side of the word and then slowly move these outwards, keeping focused on the single word as you go.

Stop when you can see no further words without moving your eye.

As you can see, your peripheral vision is quite large even when considering text as a format is one of the more difficult types of visuals we deal with.

So does eye movement monitoring give us the answer to our actions on a page?


On their own they do tell an intriguing story, but combined with web analytics and survey data they help increase our insight into peoples online ‘ click ‘ behaviour.

Note :

Advertisers may also do well to consider the technology to measure the effectiveness of their placements ' in game advertising ' .



1 comment:

Mark Taylor said...

Before and after the click - or - creating intent and converting intent. 2 stages of the same process.