Seeing ‘eye-to-eye’ with your online customers

Shoppers no longer tolerate a poor online experience. Today, every online experience must be positive - in fact it should be a pleasure for the shopper. Unfortunately, too often web sites remain hard to navigate and riddled with bugs, far from ‘user-friendly’ many are ‘user-hostile’. The result is the same, users leave and head for more readily accessible competitor sites. While the web designers and marketing team congratulate themselves on their web site, potential customers turn away, abort visits and abandon baskets. It matters not how well-designed an organization considers it's web site, what matters is what the users think.

Seeing the user’s view

That important user-focus is the drive behind PMC's use of eye tracking technology. Recognised for their extensive web testing abilities, PMC use eye tracking technology to give retailers a user’s eye-view of how well their web site works. Embedded in a computer screen an infra-red eye tracking device records each user’s interaction with the site, including how and where their eyes fall on the page.

Paul Mason, CEO, PMC states: “It’s vital that retailers present shoppers with faultless, easy-to-use web sites. They must implement a ‘right first time’ approach. It’s not acceptable to launch a site without first class usability testing. It’s important to find issues and potential frustrations before your customers do. That’s because online faults will cost you customers, reputation and money. Eye-tracking technology enables us to show retailers real-world results on how users interact with their sites.”

Once PMC access a web site, either from a retailer's premises or from their Abingdon testing lab; the eye tracking technology enables PMC to show exactly where users look on the screen. They provide details on how users see the site, where their eyes rest, for how long and the sequence they navigate the site. The results allow PMC to show retailers the impact of their web site design and layout decisions and the journey a customer takes through their site.

Real-world testing for online retailing

Mason explains: "When carry out a test we select a representative group of people to ensure a valid user survey. We then set them tasks to see how they interact with the site. This can include instructions such as: 'find your local store', 'place an order', 'qualify for a discount' or 'search for new products'. The results often highlight issues that site creators often do not see, frequently because their closeness to the project blinds them to the issues."

Mason explains: "When carry out a test we select a representative group of people to ensure a valid user survey. We then set them tasks to see how they interact with the site. This can include instructions such as: 'find your local store', 'place an order', 'qualify for a discount' or 'search for new products'. The results often highlight issues that site creators often do not see, frequently because their closeness to the project blinds them to the issues."

"Using eye tracking technology we can show how users work with a site and react to on-screen information. Particular words, colours or images attract the human eye for many reasons – not all of them good. What some users see as eye-catching could draw others away from more useful and important areas or turn them off entirely." PMC also conducts interviews with each user to record how they feel about the site and how they rate the experience. The combined results from an eye tracking survey and user interviews helps retailers make sound design and layout decisions In turn retailers make sites more eye-catching and improve conversion rates.

Recently, Carpetright commissioned PMC to review their new web site using eye tracking technology. The results from PMC's survey enabled Carpetright to make changes based on user experience. For example: more user-friendly, simplified checkout procedures. Mason states: "It can take real-world feedback from people that have experienced a site for developers to realise there are potential problems."

Looking through the users' eyes

Each eye tracking survey produces a selection of reports. These include 'Heat' maps, 'Gaze' plots, 'Gaze Capacity' maps and 'Cluster' diagrams, which provide valuable information for site development and screen layout.

Using colour graphical representations in a two-dimensional map, 'Heat' maps show how long users spend looking at a specific part of the screen, whether that's because they are reading information or reacting to a particular image or colour. 'Gaze' plots show movement sequence, order and duration of gaze fixation to show how users' eyes move around the screen. The plots track the order that each user looks at screen layout, such as left to right, top to bottom or as a specific image or offer draws their attention.

'Gaze Capacity' maps work much like a Heat map highlighting areas that users look at the longest. However, rather than displaying colour coding for areas looked at, the map blacks out areas users ignore. 'Cluster' diagrams are most effective when looking at group results. They outline the percentage of users that focused on a particular part of a page - such as a promotion or special offer. They also indicate which areas received users' attention for the longest periods of time. The technology also enables PMC to capture video and voice data as users interact with a website. In addition to tracking eye movement this playback gives visual and audio evidence of users' frustrations (such as comments or facial expressions). This is vital in demonstrating layout faults or negative comments to a retailer, and makes the results more valid.

Mason closes: "Our wide-ranging experience of e-commerce technology led us to add eye tracking technology to our range of web testing services. Now it enables us to ensure retailers develop a customer-focused e-commerce solution based on valid user input."

For further information please contact enquiries@pmcretail.com

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