Eye-Tracking and Social Media Profiles: An Insightful Study

Dec. 02, 2011

Many of us can make some pretty solid hypotheses about which areas of a web page attract instant attention from your visitors. However, when you throw something like eye-tracking into the mix and look specifically at social media profile pages, as EyeTrackShop has in a recent study with Mashable, you can end up with some really interesting conclusions.

For companies with pages on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, the results of studies like this one can help to reinforce what you already knew about social media profile pages, and may help to also uncover some new, useful tips. Read on!

1. Be Strategic in Your Profile Picture Selection

This one's especially important with Facebook, Klout and StumbleUpon. Ask yourself: is my company's profile picture representative of my brand? Is it eye-catching, unique and memorable? You can add to this by gathering feedback from your customers and/or asking your business contacts. What's their first impression?

2. Who You Know Matters

The study shows that people do look at those thumbnails of connections on your profile - make sure your company is making the right impression! This is especially the case with Facebook, Twitter and Google +.

3. Keep Your Content at the Top of the Page

This one you may have guessed: the top portion of your page is prime real-estate. The further down you go, the less likely people are to engage with the content, although the study found this effect to be less pronounced on Twitter and YouTube.