Poynter’s ongoing Eyetrack research project has taught us some important basics, such as: Online audiences focus heavily on headlines, and in some cases almost ignore pictures.
But other research tools make me want to challenge — or at least supplement — this finding.
Carsten Andreasen, a media researcher at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) recently introduced a clickmap tool that lets us follow — in close to real time — where Web users actually click on site pages. I was shown a beta test of our home page.
The clickmap shows both the actual number of clicks and a color-grading on top of all links. The most-clicked links turn dark red, while less-clicked linked are either light-red or white.
The first test of the tool has confirmed Poynter’s Eyetrack research. Our top story is presented with three links: The picture, the headline, and a “read article” link. The headline is clicked 5-10 times more than the picture — as Poynter’s research would have predicted.
…Well maybe not quite. Maybe the real answer is a little more complicated.
The image above shows clickmap results for a story from DR Update, our new on-demand TV channel. Here users can click either the picture or the headline.
Surprisingly we found that these users click the picture 2-3 times more often than the headline. It seems that presenting a video still presented with a YouTube-style play arrow changes user habits instantly.
At least one issue should be considered, as it may affect click rates: For some users, depending on screen resolution, the still images from our DR Update video stories appear “above the fold.” Personally I don’t believe this has a decisive influence on click rates, but it’s worth mentioning.
Of course, this tool can’t indicate whether users read headlines before they decide to click the video still, or if they decide based on the picture alone. However, it’s fairly clear that even if users are relying at least partly on text headlines to decide whether to click, the headline need not be the only entry path to the article.
It may also be that a site like YouTube has changed users habits: training people to click video stills when they want to watch video, and headlines when they want to read text. How users read and how they act are separate considerations.
