Screenshots via Jakob Nielsen People look at pictures of real people online but skip over generic photos.Even the most ardent Internet supporters will acknowledge that most Web sites are a hodgepodge of poor design and cluttered content.
And so Jakob Nielsen, a Web site consultant and author of a number of books about design and user interface, has made it his personal mission to try to bring order to the tangled design of most sites. Mr. Nielsen’s weapons in the fight to clean up this mess include some eye-tracking software and research he chronicles on his blog.
For his latest cleaning project, Mr. Nielsen is going after images online.
In the past he has argued that large images annoy users because of the long load times, even with a high-speed Internet connection. Now, in a new study, he points out that the random or stock images on Web sites are completely ignored by users, add more clutter to the page and don’t necessarily help from a business standpoint.
His latest eye-tracking survey found that “big feel-good images that are purely decorative” are mostly ignored online, while stock photos or generic people are also intentionally disregarded. In contrast, when users know that a picture of a person is real they will engage with the image for extended periods of time.
The study becomes extremely interesting when its findings are applied to products sold online.
In an aspect of the study comparing a set of products on Pottery Barn’s furniture Web site and a page of televisions on Amazon.com, the research showed that users largely ignored the televisions on Amazon because they were generic, and the image on the screens, usually a “guy on a canoe” or a football player, made the product image even less inviting.
In contrast, when people navigated the Pottery Barn Web site, they engaged with the decorative photos of the bookcases for extended periods of time because they were images of the actual objects for sale.
Mr. Nielsen concludes with some advice to those using the Web to hawk products or content: “Invest in good photo shoots: a great photographer can add a fortune to your Web site’s business value.” After all, he notes, most sites are full of “fluff — of which there’s too much already on the Web.”
On the Amazon Web site, people mostly ignored generic pictures of televisions because they didn’t offer real information.
On the Pottery Barn Web site, people engaged with the product photos for extended periods of time.
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