Eye movement tracking technology exposes poor web design

Businesses are still failing to get the most out of websites with clunky navigation and poor online advertising placement, according to research based on new eye-movement tracking technology that measures where surfers look on web pages.

The study, carried out by the Usability Company, monitored people's eye movements around the websites of The Financial Times, The Guardian, and The Times as they were asked to carry out tasks including finding the business section of the site, a football score from the previous night and information on the NHS.

One of the key findings of the research was that template-based designs where ads are always placed in the same position on a page are less effective as people learned very quickly where ads were likely to appear and subsequently ignored those areas of the page when browsing the rest of the site.

While study participants looked at the adverts on the right hand side of The Guardian home page they rarely looked at the right hand side of subsequent pages on the site. The same pattern emerged with the banner ad at the top of The Times website.

The report said: "It would certainly be more effective to alter the positioning of advertising from page to page (or at least section to section) of a site. People find it much easier to scan information vertically than horizontally."

Advertising positioned within the body of the site also has a far greater probability of being recalled than advertising located in the ‘traditional’ areas for advertising, such as the top of the page and to the right hand side, according to the research.

While there were variations in the eye movements of people from site to site and even from page to page within each site, a consistent pattern emerged in that people look to the middle of a page initially then towards the area usually inhabited by the logo of the site, followed by the left hand side, where they expect to find the main navigation menu.

Research participants found The Times site to be the best structured and balanced. People found the use of colours on The Guardian site to help delineate the page but it took longer than other websites to navigate using the top level horizontal menu bar.

The Financial Times came off worst, with participants being confused by the amount of information on the homepage – reflected in their eyes darting around the page without fixating on anything in particular.

Marty Carroll, director at the Usability Company and author of the report, said the eye tracking technology provides hard evidence that people do pay attention to interesting and well-placed online ads and that clickthrough figures are not necessarily an effective way to measure the success of ad campaigns.

"We hope it will change how ads are pushed," he said. "The web doesn't have to be a direct marketing tool. It is about branding as well."