CRO: Are Eye Paths Important?

We’ve spoken before of A/B testing and multivariate testing as a way of determining the efficacy of your conversion rate optimisation efforts.  But it is worth pointing out that testing can go too far. Is red text less effective than blue? Is a green CTA button going to convert better than a black one?  These factors are less important than your overall conversion funnel and navigation structure. But how important is eye path in CRO and in your visitors’ experience of your site?

Eye path is simply the path one’s eyes take when they look at your site. It is an important design element because you want the page to be naturally and comfortably set out in order to be aesthetically pleasing and to lead the visitor to the information or CTA he needs.  It is not a nit-picky detail at all, but one that can impact bounce rates and conversion rates.

• Look at your site objectively. You can use tools like EyeTools to create “heatmaps” which track the eye path of your webpage.  Or you can take a DIY approach: have a friend look at your site and take note of which elements their eyes went to first, or replace your copy with lorem ipsum, or a dummy text. This allows your eyes to move over the page without getting distracted by text.  What do your eyes navigate to naturally? Are these the elements you want visitors to see first and concentrate on?
• The larger text dominates; does your text size correspond with their relative importance? Likewise with color and contrast.
• Is the page too cluttered? Is there too much content that is screaming for attention? By using whitespace, you can actually call attention to a page element.
• Add variety. Without overdoing it, consider adding video, if appropriate to the content of the page. Motion can grab attention immediately, but make sure it is not distracting.

The eye path is not an extraneous detail; it, like your navigation, tells you how a visitor is going to interact with your page.  In general, it is best to keep the experience as streamlined and simple as possible so we don’t get overstimulated by detail.