Search Engine Optimization

Eyetracking studies showed that images, relevant to the context of the page, capture people’s eyes. Images can be used throughout copywriting pages with the purpose of catching attention and making pages more eye-friendly.

The Eye-tracking studies.

• It might surprise you that our test subjects typically looked at text elements before their eyes landed on an accompanying photo, just like on homepages. As noted earlier, the reverse behavior (photos first) occurred in previous print eyetracking studies.
• We also learned that the bigger the image, the more time people took to look at it.

Source

More articles on eyetracking:

• Eye Tracking On Universal And Personalized Search
• Eyetracking Research
• ENQUIRO EYE TRACKING WHITEPAPERS

It’s a fact that online surfers do not read, but scan pages. The pattern is top-down, left to right, with the top left corner being the most important part of a webpage – a place for a headline.

Once readers go down the page, their attention span decreases:

One of the ways to induce readers to continue reading is by placing relevant images throughout the copy. It’s well know that short paragraphs, with plenty of formatting, bolding, italics, bullets and emphasis stop reader’s eyes. Adding images to the mix can entice visitors to read more.

Mint.com is a perfect example. On the features page, It has a detailed explanation of the services, with 9 headlines, plenty of bolding and 7 images. Each image is related to the writing and entices interest on it’s own. Bolded text, next to the images, ensures readers notice it once they study the images. If bolded text is interesting enough, readers will read part or the entire paragraph, looking for explanation of the image. This a perfect place to drop some important lines about the product.

It’s important to make images relevant and original. Generic model stock photos rarely entice interest. An image should carry some value, inform reader or entice interest. The advice would be stay away from the following types:

Those images are overused on the net, largely by designers who try to communicate some soft of message. Though no one should blame designers for doing their job, those types of images lost their value. Far more engaging are graphs(relevant to the context), real pictures of staff, and models that look directly in the direction of the content that reader should be paying attention to.

Of course retailers should include as many images as they can, in all possible angles and resolutions. Internet is a 2 sense world – sight and sound. Sound is rarely used on websites and its a challenge to paint 3d pictures with copywriting for over a 1000 products. Underuse of images is no excuse for retailers.

You can learn more about from an interview of the grok’s.