Your Images Their Eyes

Your Images Direct Their Eyes

Two Way Communication

As VWO shares in a great post about eye tracking studies, visitor eyes tend to follow the gaze of people on your website.

"Human eyes tend to follow the direction they’re pointed in. As the call-to-action is your most important page element, you must point your prospects towards it. Notice in the image given below how the arrow brings attention to the search bar immediately, making the purpose of the page very clear for prospects:an example of how arrows on a website give directional cues. Image Source: WriteWork

However, using a pointer is not the only way to guide an individual’s attention in a particular direction. With images it gets more subtle than that.Eye-tracking studies have shown that it matters where subjects in images are looking. Subconsciously, people tend to follow the gaze of subjects and look in the same direction. This is illustrated in the image below, taken from an eye-tracking study: a screenshot from an eye-tracking study involving the placement of photos Image Source: NeilPatel

Make your subject look or point in the direction of your call-to-action (or important information you’re trying to convey) and test it to see how it impacts your conversion rate. ConversionXL conducted a research on which visual cues drive the most attention. They created variations of a lead gen page featuring different visual cues. The variations had one of the cues each from the following:

Human looking away from the form Human looking towards the form Arrow Triangular graphics Line Prominent form"

- How Eye Tracking Helps Web Optimization

Our 2 Favorite Images

Since your images direct their (visitor) eyes, there are only a few images with people we like.

Welcome Look - Person Looking Out Directly At Visitors
CTAs - Person or People Looking At A Call-To-Action or Other Important Content

Welcome Stare

Blondie provides the "welcome stare" on MartinWescottSmith.com. I'm (#51) looking at Blondie. Dylan is looking out at the visitor (more or less). The artist sweeping his studio is sweeping towards Blondie, and the Julian Opie image is walking toward Blondie. That's how to use your pictures to direct their eyes.