Does movement attract attention on Web pages?

Tracking eye movements is a valuable way of understanding where people choose to focus their attention. In a short study (Ethical Ref: 07175), we looked at whether people were more likely to view information on a Web page if it was moving. The study used the the BBC news, Guardian and Prospects Web sites as stimuli. On each page, a portion of the information was either static (stayed the same) or dynamic (changed over time). On the BBC and Guardian Web pages, we looked at the news tickers at the top of the page, and on the Prospects Web site, we looked at the column of links on the right hand side.

View the stimuli for the study.

The heat maps below show where people looked by superimposing coloured areas over the page - the closer an area is to red, the more people looked at it.

On the BBC News Web site, people viewed the ticker significantly more if it was moving.

On the Guardian News Web site, people viewed the moving ticker significantly more quickly when they entered the page.

On the Prospects Web site, the heat map appears to show that people viewed the links more frequently when they were moving, but in fact statistical tests show that the difference in fixations between the two versions of the page is not significant. This may be because the links add little new or interesting information when they change.