Eye Tracking Studies Are Good for More Than Just Search

One of the most useful studies to come out in the last few years is the eye tracking study released by the team over at Enquiro. Gord Hotchkiss has done an outstanding job of helping educate search marketers about how searchers interact with search results and what we need to do in order to get better performance from our campaigns. Today, Gord makes an outstanding blog post about eye tracking studies and web site design. While it may not seem like this post has anything to do with search...I'd ask that you think a little outside the box.

You see, one of the primary objections that search engine marketers here when giving advice is that search engine friendly design is "ugly" and that "design rules" dictate that a good site simply can't be search friendly. That's always been a tough line for some search marketers to argue against because good designers are well trained in what attracts the eyes and what will draw a visitor through the content. The problem is, that these designers are almost always trained on these things in regards to PRINT advertising, not web advertising. Gord's post does an excellent job of proving that what many designers think they know about the web simply isn't true.

In fact, the area of a web site that draws the most eyeballs is the text navigation, showing that searches are now savvy enough to ignore the pretty pictures and focus on the task at hand...finding information.