How A Pretty Face Can Push Visitors Away
It’s no surprise that marketers use faces to draw people into their websites. They know that, from birth, humans are naturally attracted to, and engaged by, faces. In fact, one of our studies showed that people perceived websites as more “professional” when they had images of people on the site.
Be careful! Simply picking a “pretty” picture isn’t enough. Too often marketers will take people pictures and show them to a focus group to see which ones they relate to best. As marketers, we worry about the gender, style and overall quality of the picture relating to our message. There’s another crucial factor for marketers to consider: The direction in which the model’s eyes are facing.
Generally, it’s best when the model faces the content you want visitors to engage with first.
Take a look at the landing page below (I’ve blurred the text to protect the guilty innocent):
What happens is that you are naturally drawn to the image of the attractive model and our eyes tend to meet. Since her eyes are focused back at you, they stop you in your tracks — and researchers can prove it by studying your eyetracking gaze.
Take a look at the following ads that our friends at Bunnyfoot analyzed in eyetracking studies:
Now take a look at the Heatmap of the ads:
Next time you choose a face to appear on the web or in an ad, consider where it draws the beholder’s eyes. Ask yourself whether the image draws attention away from your persuasive message.
P.S. This is for my friends who like to test everything. I have a couple of questions: When testing pictures, do you currently break down the variables in the image? If so, were you aware of using the directional focus of a model’s eyes as a variable?
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Bryan,
My company has a first of its kind shopping cart program for a car dealer to use in a click and mortar strategy. Credit, trade ins, pricing, accurate monthly payments, etc.
Within that program we use a 3D avatar and you are exactly correct on your assessment that as humans we are drawn to faces, then to what the faces are looking at.
Our avatar comes from Haptek and what attracted us to them is that their avatars don’t just sit there blankly starring back at you, it has default animation that has it cycle through realistic emotional states.
It does other things, but related to your post, for our on demand help, we made it so that “upon a mouseover” the avatar would look over to where you are pointing, then look back at you and tell you about the screen object in question.
It is still very early for us, but the effect of this on consumers has them doing what in Artificial Intelligence and entertainment circles we call transference. Tansference is when we suspend our knowledge that the character is not real and start to think of it as a real person with thought, feelings and personality.
Just thought I’d share since your Persuasion Architecture shaped a lot of our work (we’re huge fans) and ask your thoughts on the role Interactive Virtual Agencts / avatars / online shopping assistants, etc.
That’s very interesting Bryan. Additionally, let’s not forget the power female photographs over male photos. Interestingly enough, even among bloggers or within social media outlets such as digg, many people (male and female alike) will place a display photo of an attractive female to encourage readers and voters to take interest in their content! It goes to show that sex sells. And of course if all the elements are in place; ie eye direction, colors, content, headlines, etc. you can maximize your conversion results.
[…] How A Pretty Face Can Push Visitors Away […]
Bryan, excellent article.
Ayat, good to see you here, I’d like to complement your comment, if you allow me,
Loving the ads and buying the product are two totally different things. For advertising to be effective it has to reinforce a brand’s core value not just get attention.
Advertising needs not only to grab your attention but also to communicate a message. Too much beauty or entertainment or even celebrities can get in the way of delivering the message
Cheers
Lucio
[…] you ever heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”? Well, you should choose your images carefully, or you’ll take attention away from your persuasive message. del.icio.us Digg Furl Reddit […]
Hmmm … What about when models are an integral part of what you are selling, like jewelry for example?
Funny, at first I thought this article was about using real people instead of models. Sounds like after reading this, that beauty is still the big draw. We are asking our customers to send in pics of themselves wearing our jewelry so that we can put them on our site. My feeling is a woman wearing georgeous jewelry will feel beautiful and that will be reflected in her picture - regardless of whether or not she is a model.
How do I make best use of these pictures?
Which version sold the most merchandise? Maybe that was mentioned in the post, maybe I just missed it.
I’ll pick the creative treatment that sells the most merchandise, not the one that has the neatest heatmap.
Kevin,
That is a given. The point of the post is that they never even tested it and the fact that it does have an impact on visitor behavior. In the proper experimental process you should be aware of all the variables and their potential impact on the final outcome. If you are not aware of it, you can throw away something that might have been the best model for your page only they had their eyes in the wrong place.
Mendy,
How about a rating contest? Viewers can rate pictures of women wearing their jewerly. You can give a small prize to whomever gets the best rating. Women enjoy looking at and commenting on other women’s attire. This just gives an incentive to post their own picutures for the prize.
Just a matter of specialisations I guess - as a keen photographer I’ve long been aware of pic composition, including how any movement, trails or eye direction, even “random” straight lines, all affect the viewer’s eye direction and engagement.
A basic example is how a car moving should always be moving “into” the picture, not out of it, unless you’re deliberately creating an “exit” picture. In contrast you’ll see many casual snappers simply trying to center a moving car.
To me it seems using a professional photographer or graphic artist and listening to them beats using stock “pretty” photos of women. I doubt I’m alone in actually raising barriers against adverts with pretty women, done to death and far removed from engaging me with the product or service. In fact I tend to presume there IS no real message if they have to fluff it with mild porn. Attractive people of either sex are great for closing deals and getting contracts signed in person, not so great for passive viewing on the net. Heck, get em too aroused and they’ll click to a whole different site…
We’ve already gone past this I glamor stuff I think, I’m already bored with the cheesy pics of “homely” people, pro photography, scrubbed and squeaky clean images of fugly people, as they’re “more real”. Nah, they still look fake. Use a cartoon or avatar and show me a photo of your actual store or office? A lovely lass may grab attention but why read boring text when you can gaze at her? Ms Lovely gazing at your product? Yep, that could work. Once or twice.
S.
Absolutely fascinating! Thank you for this article.
interesting article, thanks — one thing that could make the example much clearer is to maintain the left right positions in the two sets of images
I haven’t really think about this much but after reading your article I realized you have a point. Thanks for the new idea. I will keep it in my mind. ^^
The heatmap looks too perfect to be natural. Personally I found the averted eyes very distracting and unnatural.
The heatmap has been generated from a sample of several hundred consumers, hence the ‘too perfect to be natural’ appearance - we don’t often get to eye track so many consumers! Bryan, thanks for bringing this great example of persuasion to the attention of your readers.
[…] attention to communicate than words. On October 2nd Grok Dot Com published a post about faces and eye tracking. I as you read through look a the pictures of the woman with red hair, they are out of sync. Your […]
Great Point..Maybe the old saying sex sells isn’t quite true. I wonder if we flipped this around and put a 80 year old in there what the stats would be. I am going to do some research of my own as you have definately peaked my interest. I can see where the advertising might go missed with a destracting picture, however every time you turn on the tv or open a magazine these exact ads are in them.
http://www.PassportMentors.com
I never thought of it that way thank you
I might want to chage my marketing look
http://www.livingeasyat40.info
You have the pictures reversed, top left on add in bottom right on
heat map
In my humble opinion, all too often today small business owner while an expert in their product has too little knowledge of marketing. Their choice become the all too familiar do nothing to spend more on a ill conceived campaign than the product will ever return in revenue. Remember, this story isn’t directed to the pro’s at Proctor & Gamble, they already know that you like little snuggle bears. This is about who a grass roots marketer can get the biggest bang for the buck. Sadly, most small businesses have to choose between competing needs for their money. The marketing budget is always the one that seems to give way. I think the article should stress that todays shoppers are visual and that with a little work todays business owners can syndicate their products into the internet better than ever before. I run a South Florida virtual tour company, and while most people think of virtual tours for real estate we have had great success moving product based images into the tours. Imagine a time sensitive product like produce- we have a produce wholesale who sends up 15 product jpg every week and we convert them into a slideshow style tour. He then takes this slide show url and emails it to his client base every Monday morning. You bet it’s a success! To learn more take a look at my website at http://www.mls-tours.com (yes a picture is worth a thousand words)
Isn’t it odd that there are no red areas on the picture to the right?
According to the post, eye contact was supposed to “stop you in your tracks”. Wouldn’t that leave a very red zone around the eyes.
Looking it the pictures, it does not look as if the “complete amount of looking” adds up. w/o eye contact people look harder on all areas of the picture? Where did they look when faced with the “eye contact picture”?
Is it just me?
[…] your points. I wrote about using pictures on landing pages a couple of weeks ago, so did GrokDotCom. The important point is that not only can a picture express complicated points quickly they can […]
Great post. An eye opener for me. I will for sure work on this concept in next photo shoot for our products.
[…] heartiest congratulations toBrian Eisenberg for taking 1st place in the Online Marketing/General Category. His visual demonstration of how the […]
[…] How a pretty face can push visitors away […]
Very interesting! We had thought about adding a lady’s photo to our landing page, in addition to the three featured gentlemen. We’ll split test this idea and see what works the best. Also, we had never thought of changing the focus of the person’s gaze to the product being offered, instead of the direct look at our visitor (eye to eye contact). Thanks!
Eric
[…] have always been a big fan of Bryan Eisenburg including his books and blog. I came across a blog post about website graphics and usability a few days ago and found it very interesting. It is a bit dated (few months old) but a very good […]
Who could ever think that it matters??
Thanks, great post!
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[…] Perhaps the marketers at TracFone should read Bryan's award-winning post, "How a Pretty Face Can Push Visitors Away." […]
Did any one test for a man/woman conversion?
[…] Een artikel hierover kunt u lezen op de website van grokdotcom, How A Pretty Face Can Push Visitors Away […]
[…] is real designers test, graphic artists calling themselves designers don’t. Related Reading: How A Pretty Face Can Push Visitors Away What really happens when you use those stock photographs website designers are addicted to today? […]
[…] The funny thing is that we as humans look for and focus on faces in whatever we look at, before almost anything else. We see this all over the web sub-culture in the form of emoticons. You may only type a colon and a parenthesis but what we see is a smiley face : ) Another example is if you cut two triangles and a moon into a pumpkin, and all of a sudden we see a creepy face (it’s looking into my soul, i know it is!) With this in mind why not ditch the “portraits” in favor of “profiles”, i.e. stock photos where the model is looking in a direction other than at the camera. This type of shot allows the viewer’s eyes to first catch the face of a model, and instead of locking eyes with the model, they are free to take in the rest of the content without feeling compelled to revisit the model. Better yet, if the model appears to be looking at a well placed headline or the content itself, where do you think the viewer will look? Yup, the viewer’s eyes will immediately flow to the dominant element the model is looking at. (For a little more analysis about this whole topic, read this Future Now Article.) […]
[…] I’m not a fan of this Abercrombie postcard, and not just because it’s a drab black and white. Although the shirt on the human shows the product in context (as it should be used) - we only get a good view of the model’s shoulder. Her eyes are looking right at you, which we know is not the best shot because the call to action links are below. Instead, your eye tends to follow along the girl’s arm and stop at the back of the guy’s head or cheek. (Read why models eyes should be looking at the call to action). […]
[…] Better placement of content — Eyetracking studies also show that staring faces distract visitors. People immediately look to the center, then the flashing signature moves the eye to the right, […]
[…] dear friend Bryan Eisenberg’s post How A Pretty Face Can Push Visitors Away also won in the Online Marketing / General category. I am thrilled for […]
Bryan, great eyeopener article. I think we did same mistake. Thanks for heads up on this. I think we need to test changing our images.