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Eye Tracking: Why Ugly Websites Can Kill Your Business

Posted on Mar 16, 2010 | 0 comments

Eye Tracking: Why Ugly Websites Can Kill Your Business We know that eye tracking studies, of course, can help designers learn about their websites, offering insight into how viewers approach their pages and navigate around. But eye tracking will often inform those at the other end of the design process, be it the start or the final touches. In a recent blog post by Sean Barton, a WordPress enthusiast and programmer from the United Kingdom, it’s a sad sight to see what was once purely functional programming work turn into what is essentially a usability eyesore. Of course it’s hard to watch your babies grow up, but when you spend countless hours on making something tick, only to see it end up an aesthetic wreck once put into the wrong hands, it must be quite maddening.

Effective design can make or break websites, and while many of us are not as distinguishing in our taste, some make the decision to use a site based on aesthetics alone. Of course, you may have to actually use a poorly designed website every so often, but Sean Barton has actually decided on a personal boycott of poorly designed sites.

After attending the ThinkVisibility 2 Conference last year, Barton was privy to eye tracking studies that demonstrated a number of user browsing patterns for different websites. He never realized how predictable users’ navigational habits could be. Apparently, one of the trickier pages to navigate was none other than Amazon.com, and Barton found himself wondering how on earth Amazon makes any money in the first place. Perhaps by now the brand outweighs the poor functionality of the site, and users trudge through tirelessly in an effort to buy what they set out to get.

Still, this is a case where eye tracking studies actually influenced the audience and not the expert, drawing attention to good design and usability. Barton says he now sees websites in a new light. In fact, he’s gone as far as refusing to buy anything from a site he deems, as he puts it, unworthy of his custom. Of course, a lot of consumers (like the Amazon trudgers) wouldn’t take it this far, but it makes a statement that design is not just for designers and theorists.

Barton is only one person, so chances are he’s not going to affect a lot of change when it comes to corporate pages like Amazon . Still though, sites like these have a lot to learn from us commoners. If we got our act together for a massive boycott, as Barton suggests (starting a black list of poorly designed sites), something like this might snowball pretty quickly into a call for better functionality all around. This wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.

Why buy from an ugly website?

Eye Tracking: Why Ugly Websites Can Kill Your Business

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