Response when you animate the eyes.
What do I spy with my little eyes?
The goal of this research, however, was to learn how to encourage desirable action, not drive business away. We animated the image and shrunk it down to a point where the entire animated graphic was little more than 3k in size. This was where we used the pedestrian and traffic safety research results to guide us in utilizing mirror neuron activity.
Figure 2
We selected webpage action items at random and placed the animated images to the left of these action items. The purpose here was to determine if an animated image of eyes shifting to the action item would cause an increase in navigating through the action item. Once again, undeniable-- and yes.
Something to make Pavlov drool
Neither I nor NextStage is declaring this a definitive study. The number of sites and total number of visitors across all the sites would only qualify as a rich small world model as far as the internet and ecommerce go. However, this research did indicate some recognizable usage curves and spikes when it came to time on site, site penetration and conversions. What does this mean for different websites?
Customer Support/Intranet: Angie Brown, strategic services consultant with Coremetrics, points out that time on site is probably not something you want maximized for customer support or intranets where "...we might actually prefer a decrease (get them the information they need in as little time as possible)." Here the judicious use of animated eyes could guide visitors through the desired navigation sequence without the usual frustration associated with such sites.
Ecommerce: Want to make sure visitors check out the latest and greatest items? Place a pair of animated eyes to the left of the action item leading to these items.
Forms: Are there fields which definitely need to be filled in or which aren't required but that you'd desire visitors fill in? A pair of animated eyes could do the trick.
Print media: A pair of visible but not intimidating eyes staring at an action item (a number to call, a place to be) could increase response by orders of magnitude.
Blogs: Increase commentary by placing a pair of animated eyes next to the "Add Your Comment Here" button.
These are some examples and are not meant to be exhaustive. NextStage is still exploring many forms of simple images as guides, although so far our results would make Pavlov drool if he were a marketer, me thinks.
A detailed whitepaper of this research, "Use of Eye Images as Navigation and Action Cues on Websites," is also available for purchase. A separate paper is forthcoming which compares four different web-based eye-action methods. Email NextStage R&D to be alerted when this paper is available.
Many thanks to John Scullin of Skolenimation for providing the images for this column.
Joseph Carrabis is CRO and Founder of NextStage Evolution and NextStage Global. Read full bio.
