PPIG 2004 - 16th Annual Workshop
An Examination of E-Commerce Homepage Design Guidelines by Measuring Eye Movements
Ekaterini Tzanidou, Marian Petre, Shailey Minocha, Andy Grayson
Abstract: The homepage is the most visited page of a web site and the first opportunity to attract potential customers. Existing design guidelines have not focused specifically on E-Commerce web sites – and only one has focused on design guidelines for homepages. Moreover, these existing guidelines have been derived from expert heuristic evaluations, apparently without involving the users themselves. The study reported in this paper used eye-tracking to investigate user interaction with E-Commerce homepages. The results indicated that users tended to look initially at the top of the page for cues of the brand identity, but that they were confused by banners and images. Overall, this study corroborated existing design guidelines for homepages, but it also identified potential refinements.