Using eye tracking to accept the account of user interfaces is something that's been about for a few years now, but it is still getting accepted by researchers. Through specialized eye tracking software, you can bigger see how users visually "enter" a website (or any graphical user interface), cross the page, and area they focus. Aboriginal I wish to altercate the analysis and acceptation for eye-tracking software, again I wish to altercate anniversary of these elements in turn.
Research on eye tracking dates aback to analysis on how humans apprehend pages in general. Early advisers activate that--as accepted faculty would imply--readers are admiring to assertive beheld stimuli, like ablaze colors or assertive shapes and orientations. This isn't too harder to imagine, as we all apperceive our eyes tend to by itself float appear accent areas on a page. However, these advisers aswell activate that readers both see an absolute page after absolutely searching at it, and they aswell access and visually cross a page according to how they anticipate the page should be laid out.
Seeing the absolute page after absolutely searching at it is important. It agency that readers will get meta-information aboriginal and again activate to attenuated down their beheld selections according to that meta-information. Meta-information artlessly agency that if users accessible a web page, after absolutely even account it, they will apperceive area advertisements are located, area images and visuals are located, and area advice and items apropos to anniversary added can be found.
As for the additional part, users already accept some abstraction of what a page should attending like as anon as they accessible it. They've been accomplished on assertive things. For example, they usually apperceive to acquisition airheaded on the larboard or the top. They usually apperceive that there will be an advertisement amid forth one or both of the abandon of the page (as on this one).
The aggregate of these two things agency that you should architecture a page so that it meets the user's expectations, and so that they bound see what you wish them to see. Now how do you acquisition out what they're seeing?
Eye tracking applications, such as GazeTracker in affiliation with ERICA (Eye-Gaze Response Computer Aid), EyeLink 2000, or faceLab aftermath a log of area a user's boring either moves or is abiding on a page. To accept what a user is fixating on, you charge to accept area the user's boring is abiding for a abrupt aeon of time. Those locations affectation what user's are paying absorption to--reading or spending a moment to understand--on the page. Further, compassionate the aisle of their boring will advice you accept how they are visually traveling on a page.
Once you've conducted these tests (using task-based testing) you can use the after-effects to acclimatize advice you wish your user's to see. All in all, eye-tracking studies are one of the best abstracts acclimated for free the account of a website.
