Eye-Tracking Results: E-commerce Site As Search Site
Eye-tracking tests are one of my favorite research tools to discover what works in online marketing (and how to fix your mistakes). In past columns, I've brought you MarketingSherpa's eye-tracking research results for search marketing (“Search Engine Marketing: Top Five Eye-Tracking Laboratory Test Results”) and e-mail marketing (“New Lab Data: How Humans' Eyes Really See E-mail Marketing Campaigns”).
Today I'd like to bring you up to date on our latest eye-tracking lab tests: e-commerce site tests. This spring we tested nine famous online stores including Amazon (of course), Dell, Wal-Mart, Apple, Circuit City, Best Buy, and eBay. There were many lessons about the ever-present "golden triangle" of attention, the importance of image size (larger is not always better), which copy would be read the most (above the fold, as you guessed), where people click (not always on clickable hotlinks), and how online shoppers view category pages (with a greater scrutiny than you may think).
We also uncovered a few mysteries, the biggest of which was: Why is Apple.com's copy viewed far intensely (especially below the fold) than anyone else's?
Perhaps the biggest lesson of all was represented by the study we conducted on Wal-Mart's home page. (See the link at the end of this column for a free PDF download that includes a four-color "heat map" of our Wal-Mart results.)
We asked our lab subjects, 38 experienced online shoppers, to go to Walmart.com with a budget of $200 that they could spend on anything they desired. Our goal was to learn how online shoppers act when they are "browsing."
I suspected that this type of browsing would be similar to recreational shopping offline — say in your local mall on a Saturday afternoon or through the pages of a favorite print catalog. The shopper is relaxed, enjoying the experience, wandering around a bit, glancing over many items before making an actual purchase decision.
Turns out I was completely wrong.
When shoppers armed with $200 to spend browsed Wal-Mart's site, guess where their eyes went? No, not to any of the images or tantalizing offers on the home page. These folks didn't look around or "browse" at all!
Instead their eyes immediately fastened on the navigation bar (horizontal slightly overtaking vertical in popularity), they picked out the category they wanted, and click! they were off on a highly directed search. The search box in the navigation bar was also pretty popular.
Almost none strayed below the fold. Above the fold no one paid much attention to merchandising, nor did they click on any promotion.
Lesson learned: Online shopping is not yet a "browsing" activity.
Unlike brick-and-mortar shoppers who may enter stores, especially in malls, as an entertainment activity ("Let's go see what they have in here"), online shoppers are much more directed, even when they have no more direction than "spend some money." People don't seem to be looking around much. Online shoppers are “blinkered” by their goals.
In fact, you could say these online shoppers' eyes treated e-commerce sites in a remarkably similar fashion to the way we've seen their eyes treat search engine results.
Store as search tool vs. shopping as entertainment–how should it affect your navigation? Think of it this way: Every site (almost) has become a subsegment of the search experience. That's a big change, especially for apparel and consumer electronics merchants.
Anne Holland is president of MarketingSherpa, a research firm publishing case studies and benchmark data for its 173,000 marketing and advertising executive subscribers. For a free copy of the “Ecommerce Benchmark Guide 2006: Top 5 Highlights Report,” click here.
© MarketingSherpa, Inc. 2006
