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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?
[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]
About the author
Bryan Eisenberg is the co-author of New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling books Call to Action, Waiting For Your Cat to Bark and Always Be Testing. Bryan is available as a professional speaker. You can friend him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter (@TheGrok).
More articles from Bryan Eisenberg
- Nobody wants to read your sh**!September 21st, 2009
- Redesign? Ask The Right Questions!September 18th, 2009
- Cross-post: How to Improve a Product Page, Part 1September 15th, 2009
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October 2nd, 2007
10:03 am
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.
October 2nd, 2007
12:03 pm
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.
October 3rd, 2007
1:16 am
[...] How A Pretty Face Can Push Visitors Away [...]
October 3rd, 2007
1:48 am
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
October 3rd, 2007
8:21 pm
[...] 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 [...]
October 6th, 2007
12:52 pm
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?
October 6th, 2007
4:08 pm
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.
October 8th, 2007
10:19 am
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.
October 8th, 2007
12:47 pm
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.
October 8th, 2007
1:23 pm
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.
October 8th, 2007
2:26 pm
Absolutely fascinating! Thank you for this article.
October 9th, 2007
2:55 pm
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
October 10th, 2007
12:11 pm
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. ^^
October 10th, 2007
9:59 pm
The heatmap looks too perfect to be natural. Personally I found the averted eyes very distracting and unnatural.
October 11th, 2007
7:29 am
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.
October 11th, 2007
11:25 pm
[...] 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 [...]
October 12th, 2007
6:08 am
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
October 16th, 2007
10:57 am
I never thought of it that way thank you
I might want to chage my marketing look
http://www.livingeasyat40.info
October 18th, 2007
1:18 pm
You have the pictures reversed, top left on add in bottom right on
heat map
October 23rd, 2007
9:45 am
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)
October 24th, 2007
12:27 pm
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?
October 31st, 2007
7:03 pm
[...] 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 [...]
January 31st, 2008
4:38 am
Great post. An eye opener for me. I will for sure work on this concept in next photo shoot for our products.
February 1st, 2008
8:08 pm
[...] heartiest congratulations toBrian Eisenberg for taking 1st place in the Online Marketing/General Category. His visual demonstration of how the [...]
February 3rd, 2008
8:06 am
[...] How a pretty face can push visitors away [...]
February 4th, 2008
1:20 am
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
February 5th, 2008
5:29 pm
[...] 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 [...]
February 7th, 2008
4:54 am
Who could ever think that it matters??
Thanks, great post!
February 7th, 2008
5:03 am
[...] Fijáos en este ejemplo, sacado de un magnífico artículo sobre la influencia de las caras en los ratios de conversión. [...]
February 12th, 2008
8:35 am
[...] Future Nowより Webサイトでマーケターが顔を使って人の注目を集めているのは自然なことです。人間は生まれつき自然と顔に惹きつけられ、興味を持つからです。事実、私たちの調査からWebサイトに顔写真があるサイトは「プロっぽい」という風に訪問者に受け止められていることが分かっています。 [...]
February 15th, 2008
3:30 pm
[...] Perhaps the marketers at TracFone should read Bryan's award-winning post, "How a Pretty Face Can Push Visitors Away." [...]
February 16th, 2008
5:55 am
Did any one test for a man/woman conversion?
February 19th, 2008
2:59 pm
[...] Een artikel hierover kunt u lezen op de website van grokdotcom, How A Pretty Face Can Push Visitors Away [...]
February 25th, 2008
7:20 am
[...] 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? [...]
March 3rd, 2008
7:14 pm
[...] 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.) [...]
March 13th, 2008
12:29 pm
[...] 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). [...]
March 19th, 2008
2:27 pm
[...] 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, [...]
April 2nd, 2008
12:34 pm
[...] 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 [...]
April 23rd, 2008
8:14 am
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.
May 15th, 2008
1:41 pm
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. But be careful. Simply picking a “pretty” picture isn’t enough. Generally, it’…
June 13th, 2008
10:58 am
I have come across this web site: http://feng-gui.com/ it’s analyzing web page according to their algorithm. its nice, and can give you general idea about where will people look on your advertisement (print or web page). Still, this is better for the print format since web pages can have animation/changing colors rather than still images. Another issue is the text…
August 17th, 2008
10:02 pm
Very interesting post man. I actually had no idea placing a person on your site would increase conversion that much. Something else to test
October 2nd, 2008
3:38 pm
Thats a short but very nice article, I enjoyed reading it. Thanks!
October 25th, 2008
1:51 am
[...] How A Pretty Face Can Push Visitors Away Das Auge lenken [...]
November 5th, 2008
7:34 am
Its really amazing to know
December 2nd, 2008
7:41 am
[...] with the customer service representative looking right at me. The Future Now folks explain that a model’s eyes direct your eyes. When the model looks at the call to action, your eyes will follow. If 1-800-Contacts wants me to [...]
December 18th, 2008
1:04 pm
[...] the model is looking off into nowhere, as we learned from GrokDotCom’ SEMMY Winning article How a Pretty Face Pushes Customers Away, people are going to get stuck looking at her [...]
January 17th, 2009
6:48 pm
Very interesting. Its a great to study and learn about the psychology of marketing, and what makes people take action etc. It gives you a huge advantage!
January 18th, 2009
12:36 pm
great article, very well presented and gives you a great overview of the power of human psychology in marketing. Thanks for the post!
January 23rd, 2009
7:56 am
[...] study on how to choose photos for your ads. http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/10/04/how-a-pretty-face-can-push-visitors-away/ « előző | következő » vbandi — 2009. 01. 23. [...]
February 12th, 2009
7:18 pm
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!
February 22nd, 2009
4:37 am
[...] the model is looking off into nowhere, as we learned from GrokDotCom’ SEMMY Winning article How a Pretty Face Pushes Customers Away, people are going to get stuck looking at her [...]
March 9th, 2009
5:14 pm
[...] d’info surgrokdotcom.com How A Pretty Face Can Push Visitors [...]
March 11th, 2009
2:32 am
[...] einem Beitrag auf FutureNow beschreibt der Autor, wie ein hübsches Gesicht in einem Online-Shop in bestimmten Konstellationen [...]
March 24th, 2009
4:05 pm
[...] I chalked that up to my own less-than-warm and fuzzy disposition — until a friend sent me this post from GrokDotCom. Take a look at the heat maps in the post and then look at these two [...]
April 1st, 2009
7:51 pm
This is really great info Bryan. I’ll definitely put it in my body of knowledge for my campaigns. Thanks a lot!
April 14th, 2009
7:20 am
[...] jakiś czas temu na blogu grokdotcom.com/ ukazał się tekst How A Pretty Face Can Push Visitors Away opisujący wnioski z badania eye-trackingowego reklam na których pojawiały się ludzkie twarze. A [...]
April 20th, 2009
5:15 pm
[...] place can take away from your sales? Check out Bryan Eisenberg’s SEMMY award winning post on how a pretty face can push visitors away. How can a girl like the one in this post take emphasis off your products? By looking at you, the [...]
April 28th, 2009
10:31 am
Wow, thanks for this article! Very informative.
May 10th, 2009
6:40 am
[...] Bunnyfoot, via GrokDotCom [...]
May 21st, 2009
8:30 am
[...] Bunnyfoot, via GrokDotCom [...]
May 31st, 2009
10:09 pm
I enjoyed this analysis. While I don’t necessarily agree with every point made (in terms of eye contact), I do agree that one should be cognizant of the images used on their website.
I debated long and hard about the pictures to use on my website. In the end I settled on clip-art like photos.
June 15th, 2009
1:44 am
[...] Bunnyfoot, via GrokDotCom [...]
June 20th, 2009
6:41 am
Good article useful
Thanks
June 25th, 2009
2:13 am
I completely agree with you for all the points. Good thing is, most of the people know this as a fact (at least those people i have interacted). But still they tend to ignore. Most of time campaign is done by advertising people and they are given pre-shoot models photos to make use of.
Thank you.
June 25th, 2009
2:18 am
Excellent resource for designer. result with Heatmap will help show them to convince their clients.
July 23rd, 2009
8:20 am
Hi Bryan,
As an A/B, Split Testing software vendor, I completely understand the need for testing such minor variations in images. Even small additions such as background halo, critical text in bold, etc. can have significant impact on the conversions.
But, honestly, it never came into my mind that even the gaze direction can impact the conversion. Would be interesting to test it further.
-Paras
July 23rd, 2009
10:10 am
These 2 heatmaps don’t really add up. It looks to me that they may have been produced to better illustrate the point rather than to be accurate.
Either part of the total image has been cut away or the one on the left represents a greater time period.
If it were over the same period I’d expect to see a greater sized yellow or green area on the one on the right.
After all, the participants had to be looking somewhere.
So where were they looking when they weren’t looking at the product?
July 23rd, 2009
10:50 am
Wow.. interesting finding.
July 23rd, 2009
1:21 pm
[...] http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/10/04/how-a-pretty-face-can-push-visitors-away/ [...]
July 23rd, 2009
2:30 pm
The Heatmap is also a pretty good example of mediocre photoshop work! It’s very compelling. My favorite is when the same stock photo ends up on several big-brand sites… often photos that I’ve already bought and used for $2, most the time.
July 23rd, 2009
10:18 pm
[...] What are you looking at? Filed under: Uncategorized — mikevallotton @ 2:36 am Tags: advertising, web design, web development http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/10/04/how-a-pretty-face-can-push-visitors-away/ [...]
July 24th, 2009
2:52 am
Hi David Hamill, you are correct the participants were looking somewhere else – the images are from 6 sheet outdoor advertisements that were shown in context i.e. within a street scene. The participants were looking at elements within the street scene rather than the advertisement.
July 25th, 2009
3:19 am
This is all kinds of crazy useful. I’m literally copy/pasting this to my designer right now. Thank you!
July 30th, 2009
6:55 pm
A T-shirt with the brand name on the chest is the best place to target male audience…..(just kidding)
August 1st, 2009
6:15 am
very 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….
August 7th, 2009
7:22 am
[...] >> The eyeline of models [...]
August 12th, 2009
12:47 am
I had never considered this before. I did the same thing on the pictures before viewing the heat map. My eyes went to where hers were.
August 19th, 2009
9:41 pm
You have a very good point. I could see how it would be better to have the person’s eyes pointing towards the text, thanks.
August 28th, 2009
4:26 am
[...] Bunnyfoot, via GrokDotCom [...]
September 1st, 2009
11:39 am
It’s a great idea!
But I think that if you do not look at the picture with Heatmap and just look at two ads, the one with the eye watching ahead looks more natural and attractive.
September 23rd, 2009
1:12 pm
People don’t just make this up. I’ve seen myself on sites I manage that by changing things as simple as slight color modifications or shadow effects that it can draw the eye to a different part of the page. Good job for pointing this out Bryan.
September 29th, 2009
11:17 am
[...] – Use persuasive images. A recent study showed something very interesting: When a face in stock photography looks away from your copy, people are likely to look away as [...]
September 30th, 2009
12:50 am
indeed you are right bout that
October 6th, 2009
12:16 pm
Really nice theory and clear demonstration as well. However, most people images I used are from other websites so I don’t have much control about the angle of a face.
October 7th, 2009
10:27 pm
Absolutely fascinating! Thank you for this article.
October 14th, 2009
8:04 am
Thank you for this eye-opener, I’m now off to find some pretty girls facing the way I need and eyes to one side!
October 14th, 2009
9:42 am
[...] And for more text-heavy sites and pages, wouldn’t skim- and scan-friendly formatting that makes use of bullets, bolding, and embedded links similarly affect or change the F-pattern described by Nielsen? We know the direction of your model’s eyes can affect how people look at your page. [...]
October 15th, 2009
9:08 am
What a fantastic article. Never thought about it before but now that you’ve pointed it out I caught myself looking at the example photos exactly as the heatmap predicted. I hate being predictable like that!
Anybody know of a webcam eyetracking software? I’d sure like to be able to do these at home.
Henal Cityslick
October 21st, 2009
3:39 am
[...] – Exploiter des images persuasives : une étude récente a démontré un phénomène très intéressant : quand une image contient un visage regardant dans une direction, les individus sont susceptibles [...]
October 21st, 2009
4:14 pm
They do say the eyes have it.
Your article has really opened my eyes.
Will be impimenting it in my new site.
Thank you.
October 24th, 2009
2:40 pm
Thank you Bryan for good article.
October 27th, 2009
5:38 am
[...] Custom has it that the web designer chooses some attractive images that go in the line of the client’s message or the client simply gives a CD with a number of stock images or images it has collected. It is the web designer’s job to get as close to ‘image marketing’ and explain things. A pretty face can push visitors away as clearly illustrated in this article. [...]
October 27th, 2009
7:16 am
wow very interesting…never thought about that before
November 4th, 2009
2:25 pm
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