Web page viewing behavior of users: an eye-tracking study

Abstract

With the development of network and eye tracking technique, eye movement in browsing the Web pages has increasingly drawn researchers' attention as an important aspect to study Web usability. Summary of background data showed there are not many studies on this aspect especially via eye-tracking technique. This experiment is an investigation of users' viewing behavior on Web pages. Study design was using eye-tracking equipment to record that users' nature browsing processes in definite Web pages. The objective is to find some features of viewing behavior and propose suggestions for Web design. The data of 34 participants acquired from the experiment was analyzed by statistical methods, and results were at the significant level of 0.05. Conclusions were drawn as follows: (1) the distribution of fixation duration is stable and well regulated; (2) the mean fixation duration is affected by some crowd factors; (3) the average fixation duration is affected by the different carriers' contents; and (4) the users' attentions is ordinal. Actual or potential applications of this research include verification of these conclusions and assumptions and guidelines for designing Web pages.