[:en]Humans are incredibly efficient at processing faces, but does that hold true in the context of a web page where the primary focus is to educate users about financial products and services? The debate raged on for one project team, so the research team conducted in-depth on-on-one interviews with eye tracking while participants experienced public-facing pages on several financial services websites.
Images of people placed early in the page where they attracted frequent viewings affected participants’ qualitative evaluations of the web pages and companies.
Figure 1. The image of a woman in the center of the page attracted strong visual fixations.
Participants evaluated the images of people, like that in Figure 1, positively and indicated that the presence of the images gave the site a personable and friendly feeling. This seemed particularly useful for financial services companies, which many participants found difficult to relate to because of the dry nature of the content. Participants used phrases like, “This company feels like it’s for an older wealthy person… but it’s nice and friendly.” Some of the conclusions drawn from the images were even more literal, with some participants commenting that the presence of the person made them think that someone was available to offer advice. When asked directly, all participants said they liked the images, and none found them distracting.
The impact of the images may have been even more powerful than the eye tracking visualization in the screenshot with the woman in the center of the page suggests. Much of the processing of the images appeared to occur when participants were fixating on a nearby feature, suggesting that peripheral processing of images played a large role. For example, one participant never looked directly at the image of the person on the page, but mentioned it without prompting in the discussion of the website.
Participants who talked at length about the image of the woman implied that she was someone who would be able to provide financial guidance. Another participant discussed an image of a couple standing near the Eiffel Tower, apparently on holiday (Figure 2). They described how the couple seemed to be enjoying their retirement with a luxurious lifestyle, despite the fact that this image did not receive many visual fixations. Instead, this image is surrounded by other features that received intense fixations.
Figure 2. The couple in this image influenced users’ opinions of the company.
Overall, participants tended to look directly at the images. In fact, the images appeared to serve as a “fixation hub.” Participants tended to start their viewing in the upper left corner, viewing the logo or log-in fields. Shortly after their initial fixations, they tended to look at an image. Then, they would move on to another major feature or two, and again return to the image.
This pattern of moving from feature to image was particularly true of the screen with the larger image of the woman. However, since the images tended to be centered, the position might also encourage the “hub effect,” in which users would repeatedly return to a prominent element before visually exploring other content.
However, this was not the only effective use of images. The results also showed that the participants’ gaze was drawn to small images far from the top center of the page. One page had a single small image of an ATM card far down the page. There was a face on the ATM card, and this small portrait image on the card drew fixations at a higher rate than would be expected given its location.
Takeaways
A few strategic takeaways emerged from this study. Because images draw attention—both to the image and to the surrounding areas—carefully consider the placement of images. Images should be near information that you intend to highlight. Likewise, they should not be placed near irrelevant or problematic information (at the bottom of the page by the Terms of Use, for example).
Though the study featured only a small set of images, the results suggest that images with faces have a far more powerful, magnetic effect than those without faces. Selection of images with or without faces may be used strategically to moderate the pull of the image on users’ attention.
Another important takeaway is that while images generally improved perceptions of the website and company, participants also drew some very specific conclusions about the companies based on elements of the images. Participants evaluated cues of age and wealth and used this information to draw conclusions about the target audience of the site and its offerings.
For most of our (fairly young) participants this left them feeling positively about investing firms, but they also felt that the company was irrelevant to them because the images primarily included older people. For example, one participant discussed at length how much she liked the image of an older couple and felt it was “sweet,” but said it also made her feel the website was not relevant to her because she did not anticipate being as wealthy as the couple at the time of retirement. Keep in mind that the use of images may backfire if they are not carefully selected to present cues that promote the brand or intentions of the page.
We encourage our clients to define the desired outcome of a design decision and then evaluate the impact on their users’ experiences. For this particular study, the combination of eye tracking and interviews helped us understand how much attention users paid to images and how strongly the images influenced their opinion of the company. As a result of this research, the design and content strategy teams were able to better utilize imagery to convey product details regarding financial advice, who their typical customer was, and values about their brand.[:zh]一项针对金融行业网站的眼动追踪研究结果表明，在数字体验期间显示的图像中，用户首先并且经常看到的是人物图像。用户在查看周围的内容时也会受到图像的影响。人物图像能够引起用户的注意，并且对用户处理网页的方式和对网页的看法有重大影响。
文章全文为英文版[:KO]금융업 웹사이트에 대한 시선 추적 연구에서는 사용자들이 사이트 이용을 하면서 사람의 이미지가 제시될 때 그 이미지를 보다 일찍 보고 더 자주 본다는 결과를 보여 주었습니다. 사용자는 또한 주변 컨텐츠를 볼 때 이미지의 영향을 받습니다. 사람의 이미지는 사용자의 주의를 끌고 사이트에서 사용자의 처리 및 인식에 실질적인 영향을 줍니다.
전체 기사는 영어로만 제공됩니다.[:pt]Os resultados de um estudo de eye-tracking de websites do setor financeiro demonstram que os usuários olham primeiro e com mais frequência para imagens de pessoas quando essas imagens estão presentes durante sua experiência digital. Os usuários também são influenciados por imagens quando observam o conteúdo ao seu redor. As imagens de pessoas captam a atenção de usuários e exercem um impacto substancial sobre os processamento e percepções dos usuários de páginas da Web.
O artigo completo está disponível somente em inglês.[:ja]金融業界のウェブサイトにおける視標追跡調査の結果、ユーザーは、デジタル体験の間に表示された人の画像を早い段階で、そして頻繁に見ることが示されている。また、ユーザーは、画像の周囲のコンテンツを見ているとき、画像の影響を受けている。人の画像はユーザーの注意を引き、ユーザーによるウェブページの処理と認識に著しい影響を与える。
原文は英語だけになります[:es]Los resultados de un estudio de rastreo visual de sitios web de la industria financiera demuestran que los usuarios miran con frecuencia primero las imágenes de personas cuando esas imágenes están presentes durante su experiencia digital. Los usuarios también se ven influenciados por las imágenes cuando miran el contenido circundante. Las imágenes de personas atraen la atención de los usuarios y tienen impacto sustancial en el procesamiento y la percepción de páginas web de los usuarios.
La versión completa de este artículo está sólo disponible en inglés[:]
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