EyeTrackShop: A study on eye movement heat maps of profile pages on foreign social networking sites

EyeTrackShop recently released an analysis report showing the hot distribution of profile pages when they are browsed on major social networking sites.

This study used webcams to record the eye movements of 30 participants while browsing personal profile pages on various social networking sites (data within 10 seconds of entering the page). The recorded data included: what content on the page was focused on, and the order in which users browsed the main areas of the page. The social networking sites investigated included: Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Flickr, Youtube, Klout, Reddit, Digg, Tumblr, Twitter, StumbleUpon and Pinterest.

Although the experimental results are far from perfect due to the insufficient number of samples, the researchers found from the existing data that:

• The profile picture of your personal profile page is very important. In Facebook, Klout and StunbleUpon, the profile picture is the most eye-catching part of the page.
• The profile pictures of your friends will also get a lot of attention. Visitors will look at the small profile pictures of your friends on the page.
• The higher the content is, the more attention it gets. This is very obvious on Pinterest, Digg and Facebook, but it is slightly better on Twitter and Youtube.

Below is the eyetracking heat map of various websites:

The profile picture and the first updated information at the top receive the most attention.

Shown here is the order in which the testers browsed the different areas, usually starting from the middle information flow.

Google+

Although testers spent slightly longer on Google+ pages than on other social networking sites, their profile pictures did not receive much attention.

The average time a tester spends on Google+’s feed is 5.9 seconds, slightly longer than Facebook and LinkedIn.

LinkedIn

On LinkedIn’s page, the website logo gets the most attention.

Flickr

Like LinkedIn, the Flickr logo draws more attention than the other images on the page.

Youtube

You can see that one video has received much more attention than the others…

Klout

The small score on the bottom right actually received more attention than the large score on the top? What’s going on…

Reddit

Posts at the top of Reddit are significantly more popular than those at the bottom.

Digg

The "big box" at the top of Digg did not attract visitors' attention as expected. The first update was still the most popular.

Tumblr

I can only say that handsome guys are pleasing to the eye

Twitter

Finally, we come to Twitter. In Twitter's personal pages, the difference in attention between the top and bottom is not much. This is better than other social networking sites.

StumbleUpon

Even though StumbleUpon's profile picture is on the right side — unlike most social networking sites — that doesn't stop it from being the most popular feature of the page.

Pinterest

The gap in attention between the bottom and the top is still huge.

(For more detailed and in-depth data, you can take a closer look at the heat map.)

The article comes from 36kr