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Eye tracking, heat maps and Pamela Anderson. What do they have in common?

Just to spice up your Friday evening, take a look at the picture below, for no more than 5 seconds. Keep in mind what the first spots you looked at. Then, scroll down and see what the computer perceives as “hot spots”.

Pamela Anderson

Now, let’s see which are the hot spots (the heat map of the picture) (thanks to the guys at www.feng-gui.com)

Pamela Anderson Computer Predicted Heat Map

Kind of strange, isn’t it? Now, don’t be ashamed, where did you look at?

What I am trying to say is that a computer is a machine, and even if it can detect skin and faces, smiles or eyes within pictures, it is still not accurate (yet). However, the Feng GUI tool is doing a much better job at predicting the heat maps for websites (or at least for ours). This a 1024 x 768 , above the fold screenshot, predicting the heat map for our home page.

Pitstopmedia's Home Page 1024x768 above the fold

Heat Map Prediction

If you are designing your website and you want to take out a little bit of guessing from the design process, using the help of eye tracking tool, you may want to take into consideration the following:

- human eyes (the direction they point to) and smiles (white teeth smile) also play an important role on where your visitors will look on the page. A picture with eyes looking straight at users will attract most of the eyes movements , while the same image but with the eyes of the “hero” pointing to a product will “heat up” the product image
- a website seen at 800×600 resolution will have a different heat map compared to the same website seen at 1024 x 768 (what’s above the fold). You need to design for the big chunk of your audience
- foveal and periphal vision also affects the eye movement
- banner blindness also has some influence
- animation will change the hot spots

Pitstop Media is a Vancouver based company, providing Internet marketing servicesto companies of all sizes, from start-ups to corporations. Need to convert more visitors into buyers? We also offer landing page design services.