Why exactly eye-tracking?

When we talk about eye-tracking and its usefulness (or uselessness) attached to sites, the main and, practically, the only objection to such testing is its allegedly meaninglessness. The same thoughts are repeated almost word for word: a competent designer will put everything right; just read a couple of books and make as written; nothing new device will not show, and the like ...

And in an ideal world, everything would be just that. However, in our, real, errors are quite common, and various kinds of design flaws have one very unpleasant feature: they are very difficult to calculate. For example, you placed an advertisement on your site or a link to some useful information - and there are few links to this link ... How to find out what the matter is - content is uninteresting, text is not clear, link is really uninteresting ... do visitors just not see your link?

Some time ago, our company tested several popular CMS (content management systems) and found a rather interesting situation. The two most popular CMS in Russia ( 1c-Bitrix and UMI CMS ) have the opportunity to test their system on a demo site, with links to demo sites located on the main page and highlighted quite clearly. But almost half of the visitors do not notice them!

The situation with UMI CMS is especially indicative. The link to the demo site is located in the "right" place - the upper right corner of the menu is highlighted in color and, it would seem, there should be no problems with its location. However, out of 10 subjects who were given the task to find a demo site, only 6 people saw this link “from the first call”. However, it should be noted that of the remaining four, two noticed this button, being somewhere on the inside pages, and another two reached the demo site “in an alternative way” by selecting the “try on the demo site” option in the download section. Here’s what the “attention map” of the main page of the site looks like until the first click:
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And this is an example of the search for the "cherished button" by one of the respondents:



With Bitrix, the situation is slightly different: they have many different products and sections and, although the button is on the main page, it is not placed in the main menu and is called “test”, which not all of the subjects associated with the demo site. As a result, the link was found again by 6 of 10 subjects, two more managed to get to the demo site in “roundabout ways”, and two of them asked for help from the operator.



And a video with an example of a search:



But if for CMS this situation is not very critical - the choice of CMS is quite limited and the potential buyer will most likely spend additional time searching for the right link - then for areas with higher competition, the loss of half of potential buyers can be very unpleasant. Even more unpleasant is the fact that such a loss is due to the fact that site owners are simply unaware of the problem, since traditional testing methods make it impossible to identify such errors.

Unfortunately, testing on the eye tracker only allows you to see what is happening now, but cannot tell you how to do it. However, based on this information, the designer is likely to be able to come up with some solution that corrects the discovered flaws. It is also important that, as a rule, various methods of website promotion and promotion require constant investment, while testing and “optimization” of the design is a one-time job that allows you to increase the conversion of the site. Only it is necessary to take into account that a design change leads to a change in perception, so it is highly desirable not to forget to test the new version ...