Sure, you probably know that great web design involves the right color scheme, graphics, content, how the information is laid out on the page, navigation, etc. But did you know that you can draw your visitors’ attention to the most important areas of your website using a very simple technique?
Think about how you automatically look toward a certain area when you see someone else doing it. Almost every day, you will look at something and not really know why you did. You do it subconsciously, because someone else was looking in that direction. The same can be done with your website! Being drawn to human faces is a natural instinct; if you have an image of a human face or even a two-dimensional stock photo, you can direct your visitors’ attention to exactly what you want them to notice most.
Suppose you have an image of someone who is gazing directly at your visitor. What will he or she do? Gaze back at that image. Now, suppose you have an image of someone looking to the side as though they are gazing directly at a product/service or information on your page. What will capture your visitor’s attention then? The object that is the subject of the image’s attention.
If you’ve never heard of attention heat maps, these technologically advanced maps superimpose colors on top of a web page and indicate those areas people gaze at longest. You can use the built-in tool in Google Analytics or even try out CrazyEgg. Whether your website pages have ads, banners, graphics, content or other media, photos grab the visitor’s attention first nearly every time – and then whatever the person in the photo is looking at grabs their attention next.
What should you take away from this information? That you can greatly increase the odds that your visitors will take the action you want them to take whether that action is making a purchase, becoming a lead or clicking a link by simply focusing their attention exactly where you want it through human images. Pretty cool, isn’t it?
