What is Gaze Cueing?

Gaze Cueing explains how we are automatically attracted to others’ gazes and lines of sight, whether that be looking directly in to someone’s eyes during a face-to-face conversation or the way in which we tend to follow the gaze of others to see what they are looking at. Experiments have shown that people were faster in finding targets when a person’s gaze was looking at the area where those targets would appear. That worked when the target appeared shortly after the person’s face. Eyes are a considerable source of information regarding emotions, intentions, beliefs and desires of others, as a lot of expressiveness is portrayed through them. Studies have shown that 55% of information transmitted during a face to face conversation relies on visual contact.

Examples

There are numerous communication and marketing techniques that make use of Gaze Cueing. For example, websites often use the human face (photos, etc.) in their adverts or on their homepage and are careful to place important elements (such as Call-to-Action buttons, etc.) within the gaze path of the model. This helps to ensure that the website visitor has their gaze automatically drawn towards the desired elements of the page.

Gaze Cueing in Marketing

There are a couple of simple ways to apply this tactic and it is used to great effect by global brands including Paypal and Skype.

1. Ensure Faces Point to CTAs The gaze of facial images are an effective way of drawing your website visitors’ attention towards a particular element on your page. Not only that, this gaze also encourages them to complete the action and provides more motivation to do so.
2. Avoid Facial Distraction Beware of images – if you use several facial images (especially those looking directly at the user) it can distract them from the task in hand, or worse away from your CTAs!

Gaze Cueing

Gaze cueing can help to unconsciously direct visitors towards your CTAs. With a few small changes to your digital marketing, you can significantly improve conversion rates.