Eye Tracking In Web Usability: What Users Really See

Abstract

Human Computer Interaction and usability have become increasingly important with the advent of the Internet and its pervasive use as means of communication, online commerce, and social networking. A user-friendly website now has the ability to boost sales and marketing campaigns as never before. As a result the need to present content on the World Wide Web in a manner that is attractive to end-users and potential customers has acquired immense commercial significance in addition to significant academic interest. Website usability is the measure of how 'intuitively' a website presents its contents. Numerous tools and techniques have been developed to measure not just the usability of a website but to also correlate the information to actual end-results in terms of sales, calls to action, decline in customer support phone calls, and other such tangible measures. Eye tracking is the process of recording the location of a gaze (the current location of focus) and the motion of the eye (from one location of focus to the next). The data collected by this process and the insight such information provides form one of the methods used to evaluate usability issues in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) within the commercial and academic environments.