S1 Ep8 Where eyes really go

[Music] People miss your best message because their eyes never land me. That's not because they're distracted. It's because the page is not steering attention. [Music] Welcome to ThinkShift, the podcast where neuroscience meets business. Today we're unpacking where eyes really go and how to guide attention so the right message gets seen. If your website has more than one hero message, this matters. [Music] Finally, Ann, good to see you again. Hey Clint, how you going? I'm good. How's your week being? What are you wearing? I'm wearing a hat today because I thought a casual outfit. Yeah. And you know, you're wearing a nice casual jacket. Of course, nice denim jacket. Those were listening. I've got a denim jacket with heart pockets. Nice. And heart pockets. I don't think you call that casual though, per se. Yeah, I don't do casual wearing wearable. That's quite a dress stop. Yeah. It's your look style. It is. Yeah. So don't change that. No, no, won't be. But yeah, no, the hat's good. Thank you. Well, that's good. Yeah, because you are a man, little poor fan. Well, yeah, I am. I am. We've had it tough for you. Let's not talk about this. We're going to get straight into it. We're going to talk about where eyes really go. Now to your hat to be honest. Yes. Yeah. So the science, we'll go through the science behind our attention gets steered first. Yeah. People do not see what you design. They see what their attention allows. So what actually happens in the first second when someone lands on a page? You know, they read your marketing material, opens your proposal. What actually happens? So the very first thing is am I safe here? Is this an environment that I'm okay with and is it relevant? Right. And there needs to be relevancy because the brain will scan and if it's not relevant, why am I here? And if it doesn't feel safe, and I'm not talking that you get hurt, but the brain wants to put you in a place where there's comfort. Right. And where there isn't too much load. So if it feels that that's not the case, you move away. Right. And there's a famous experiment or study done, right? By Lingard. You know what I mean? Through what that was. What this is in 2006 is the research showed that people would form a judgment of a page in about 50 milliseconds. So we actually talked about this in one of our other episodes that we think we've got one to three seconds, which we do to actually absorb information and understand what's on it. But the actual initial impact or the judge subconscious judgment that we form is 50 milliseconds. So it's, it means that we don't have time to think about it. It's not something that we do. It's an automatic response. And I go back to our, you know, your process theory and, you know, system one thinking that's very, very fast. It's there for a reason because if we don't understand it, if it's not relevant, if we don't feel safe, we're going to move on. Why would you stay? Yeah. Yeah. So we don't have a lot of time for our first impressions. And we, you know, we are, we're human nature. We judge, but we don't just judge in terms of visual, we judge in information that we're actually consuming as well. Right. I don't think I've ever seen so much importance on first impressions actually really, really matter. Yeah. And now that that study has been put in front of me, the 50 milliseconds, that's, that's crazy. Yeah. And it's the same if you're presenting or doing a keynote or if you are in front of someone, the delivery, the way that you look is, there's a, there's a rule. It's, you know, the 55, 38, 7% rule and 55 is how, how you present it. So the delivery, 38% is what you say and all your tone and the 7% is actually the words. Right. Yes. So it's like, are you for real? Like, I'm an expert here and I'm talking about if you deliver it in a mon, I can't even do it, but in a monotone like this, they're really, but people are going to go, yeah, I don't think so. Yes. Even if what I'm saying is, is, is, you think is captivating. If you're not delivering in a way that's going to capture attention in that first 50 milliseconds, subconsciously, you've lost them. Yeah. So it is really important. So it's a very important study that was done by Lingam. I know we've moved off from where I go a little bit, but I know TEDx or TED speakers are actually trained up in terms of delivery, right? I mean, their subject matters usually spot on, but it's how it's delivered. 100%. I've applied actually to be a TED speaker, do a TED talk at something. It's on my list, one of things that I want to do. And one thing I do know is they are a host to the, like it's unbelievable and it's around the delivery. So, yeah, they're subject matter experts. They know their stuff, but they actually have curators and, you know, they experience keynote speakers that have, you know, curators and guides to help them in the delivery that's good in person in the analog space, but also online because most, you know, I looked on, I watched online. Yeah. So there's a term, I gaze cues. Yeah. What is that in plain language? What we are influenced by what other people do and say, but we also are influenced by where other people look. So if someone just think about it, if I turn my head and look at something, you can't help yourself. You turn, look, you turn and look. And you don't look, don't look, don't look. Don't look, don't look now. But there is a, and what do you do? You cannot help, but even more so from the eye gaze cues is if you actually turn your head, we subconsciously turn our own. Interestingly, someone very clever named Clint Nelson on my website. So if you go to leonelogiconsulton.com and have a look on my page, you will see a picture of me looking up. Now one thing in particular is the normally you would, especially on a home page of a website, is have a, if it's a picture of a person or human looking towards a text. So you do get someone, you know, looking at my picture, I'm looking towards the text. The eye gaze cue is for the consumer to then look at the text, but you very, very cleverly and strategically using applied neuroscience have me looking up at the book, a call button, a call to action. I'm just glad you noticed. Of course I noticed. It's my job to notice. Otherwise you'll go, we're going to fight. No, I'm joking. No, we had a lot of fun doing that. But it's very interesting that it is, you know, very different to what people expect. And of course, I've had people say, what are you looking at? Oh, that actually brings attention. Yeah. So super important. Yes. In terms of utilizing imagery, then let's talk about imagery for a second. Why do faces sometimes outperform, copy, like the visual element? Yeah, because we see ourselves in a face. It might not be the same face, but we identify as a human. Yeah. First of all, it's easier to process. So processing ease of the brain is much easier for an image in general, let alone an actual face. There's relevance or relevancy bias. Also, we tend to like recognizing people. It's, you know, when we look for celebrities, you know, also, and so it looks like that all there. So we actually do, it's something that we enjoy doing and we find cognitively, it's easy. So when we look at faces and that's why there needs to be human elements to everything that you do. Yeah. That obviously needs to be relevant. The element needs to be relevant. Ha, ha, ha. But it's true. The element does need to be relevant. Let's make our own cliche. Because it's something that does draw attention. Where text is still important, hard to read, more load, the relevancy is they have got to, I've got to search through. I've got to jump into the pool of balls and find the ones that are relevant where with a human face, it's right there in front of me. And in terms of, I guess, chunking as well. So making sure that the cognitive load is reduced by inserting imagery throughout balls of copy. It makes it easier to digest that information, right? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. We need to intersperso. So we find that left brain, you often hear me talk about front brain, back brain a lot. Because people go left, right brain, left, right brain. Now let's go front, back, so front, back. We're looking at, obviously, a lot of different parts of the brain, very important. But we've got our prefrontal cortex at the front. Our prefrontal brain at the back. One is for safety, which is our prefrontal brain. It regulates cortisol, our prefrontal cortex at the front. It regulates oxytocin, which I also call the business hormone. Because with oxytocin upregulation, it's collaboration, it's partnership, it's how great business is done. When we go left, right, we start thinking imagery and text. And so the right part of our brain interprets images. So we then have images on the left because there is the dissection and the overlap. For instance, if someone unfortunately has an episode or a stroke or something like that and it's affected their right side of their body, it would have happened on the left part of the brain. Same thing happens here. And then text is interpreted by the left side of the brain, so that's on the right. So that also creates less cognitive load by having your eye gaze follows, having imagery. Now you don't want to have it all, there has to be some challenges and entertainment that the brain feels otherwise, it's pretty bland and we get bored. But imagery is much more effective in certain instances on the left and text on the right. Okay. Obviously, with my website, the text is on the left and the headlines on the left and I'm on the right. Because, more importantly, we have a hierarchy of the call to action, which has to be on the top right. So I need to be on that side. Yes. So when does this backfire? When you're looking away from someone, I guess, or where you are directing the gaze to the wrong thing. So the photo of the person, the eyes are looking away from the copy or the body? Or, yeah, and I see a lot of you would say, I mean, I'm interested in getting your opinion and your expertise on this. Stock photos where people think, "I need a photo for something," and they'll put in a stock photo, but yet the person in the photo is looking at somewhere else. But it's like, "Oh, I've got a placeholder. I've got to put a photo in there." Yeah. And it's got a computer. Oh. It's got two people talking over the inner boardroom or something like that. And they concentrate on that rather looking at the faces and where the gaze is. That's actually more important. And you probably see these too. I see a bit of it. Yeah. It needs to be contextual. So that photography can't just be, I don't know, we use placeholder a lot, particularly in the early days of designing the site and whatnot. Or the user experience, I should say, but contextually relevant photos, super critical. It's easy to do stock these days. It's easy to AI generate something and throw it in, but it can be detrimental to the experience and detrimental to the brand itself. It's one of those things I always try to enforce is get yourself a photoshoot. You know, get the team in there, show everybody who you really are behind the scenes. It's going to check you out. Have to do it. Then have to pay a lot of money. You can do it very, you know, you don't have to get super duper, you know, one of my good clients. It's going to be really good. One of my clients, she's like, I hate being the front of the brand. I don't like being seen. And like, unfortunately, you're going to have to be seen. Especially in the early days of the business when it's getting off the ground. It's bootstrapping. It's a start-up. Your consumer wants to see the view behind the brand. They want to see the human aspect behind the logo in the corner of your website. So you have to bring yourself into it and what better place than in home page content. You working with your team, you servicing clients, you just as yourself, photoshoot. Got to be done. Yeah. And that's interesting. You say about your other brand. 100%. I've got a step for you. Yes. Love us. Over 80% of people, including C-Swiz and executives, because people think, you know, on social media is just anyone. No, this is including execs. Over 80% of people, people, will look at your personal profile first on LinkedIn in particular before your company. So regardless, if you're the, I mean, obviously it's really obvious with me because my name is in my company. But even if it's not like even neurodesign, it's Leanne and Clint. People will go to you, Clint, and will go to me, Leanne, before they will go to the neurodesign page because they want to know who is the human behind the brand, who are the people before I invert a commas, if for the listeners, people who are watching, waste my time or is my time worth going to a website and consuming more information. So I want to see who these people are. And they have a look and they go, okay, he's okay. Yeah, she not so much. Okay. And then, that's not right. No, they'll go, okay, Clint knows we've talked about Leanne, and then we go onto neurodesign and we have a look. And that happens. And I tell a lot of my clients, my big corporate clients, don't think that your individual profiles insignificant, they're not, they're really, really important. They looked at before going to, so going back to your, about your corporate image, but also making sure that everything is relevant because there are going to be eyeballs on you and there needs to be eyeballs on you. Yes. So back to IGAs and whatnot. So attention isn't earned by adding more. It's earned by guiding the first clients and making sure that our lines content is relevant and contextual to the imagery. Before we go any further, I just want to ask our listeners out there. If you're enjoying this content, please hit like and subscribe so you can stay up to date with all the latest that's happening with us and you won't miss a think shift episode. We're now going to talk about the practical attention levers and what to adjust. You can steer attention with a few repeatable levers and you don't need a full redesign. So let's talk about those levers. There's three of them we're going to talk about here. So level one is one key focal point. Yeah. What does that mean? Well, you want one action, something that is easy to consume that someone in that one to three seconds. Remember you've got 50 milliseconds to get the attention in one to three seconds for them to consume it. What is that you want to do in that one to three seconds? Yeah. What's that focal point? Yeah. Don't have three. You haven't got three seconds. One second for one, second number two for another, second number three for the third. It's three seconds for one only and that's one of the biggest boobies that we see. You would see it a lot. Yes, I do. There is actually a hex law. Yeah, we talked about that. We talked about that. So every element, so in 1952, the industry created something called hex law. For every extra element, competes for attention. The attention doesn't expand. It gets divided. So if we keep adding things, rather than having our attention that we think, "Oh, well, we're adding something else on. Or we're going to learn something else. Or we're going to do something else." No, we're actually diluting what it means by divided. We're diluting our attention. So nothing gets our attention. Because the decisions, so the more decisions that we make, it takes up more time. So we only have a finite amount of time. So we have to dilute that intensity of brain power. Yeah, well. Level two is faces engaged direction. So use gazes to point towards the message or call to action in terms of your photography. You're what you did for me. Yep. People's eyes move from face to offer to button. So they kind of. Or to action. And to action. Yeah, yeah. So, level three, product grids and browsing. Yeah. So reduce visual noise, increase grouping and cues. It's all about solidifying and distilling. Yeah. Distilling down. Less is more. Faster product. Distillings made me think that I'll feel like a gin and tonic. Or maybe a whiskey. Or maybe. We were offered by that. I am a GNT girl. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Don't mind a GNT. Yes. I have to do that after this episode. Not a GNT girl per say. And that. I want a GNT. A DMC person. Yeah. A DMC person. Faster product selection and fewer bounces is the last one there in level three. Yep. So finally we're going to talk about as a business what to do this week. You don't need more content. You need clearer cues. How do you audit attention without fancy tools? So what's someone looking at? Where do they go first? They asked them. You know, it's all around behaviors and monitoring behaviors. And this is, I get a little bit funny with feedback forms and surveys because a lot of it is around biased opinion and expectation of behavior. And sometimes what I always say, those of you that know me say, I know I say this accidental lies. What is the expected behavior? Yeah. What is it? So rather than getting someone to fill in, what did you look at first? Watch, look at them. Where are their eyes going? What is it that they're actually looking at? Because often you don't even realize and you can use, you know, heat mapping software over the top well on. If it's a digital product, you can put a heat mapping on top. Obviously it was the analog product not so much. But what is it? Yeah. What are they actually doing first? Ask them. What was it that they saw? What color did they see first? What font did they see first? What image did they see first? What word did they see first? What's CTA? Did they see first? What captured their attention in that first, first, first, one to three seconds? Because whatever happened with the impression in the 50 milliseconds impacted the impression in the one to three. Right. Yeah. I think as well, user testing is so critical and bigger, you know, budgets and whatnot. Businesses that can allow for that in their, in their business plan. Always testing what the users are doing. So get a large group together, people that don't know you and know bias to test. Or bias against you in a way. Yeah, it can be. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And then testing, there's an even just have to be on websites. I mean, marketing collateral as well. And proposals and whatnot. Getting a feel for what are people actually reading and doing on your, on your business? Yeah. One thing I was going to talk about around proposals when you said that, but there was another question I wanted to ask you. Have you ever used to keep mapping? Limited. Okay. My teams have. Okay. So a lot of development teams that I work with do. Right. It's one thing they always offer as a service to my clients to say we can set this up for you, you know, against. So is it a subscription mechanism with a third party product? It is. There's things called semrush, screaming for all going to hold much of others that will do that for you about at a cost. So I guess it's up to us to talk about value around why you should do that. But it's usually a budgetary line item that is looked over. You know, it's like, I don't eat that. Until later, when you see, come back and go, I should have learned a lot from that. You can. You can. You can. You can learn a lot, but also not only that, for you and I, and the work that we do, also patterns of behavior. Right. You know, I'm all about, I mean, behavioral science, behavioral economics, you know, is patterns of behavior to transact. So I know, I know how it works. I'm not that familiar with it, but you would be, and it'd be, into some of our listeners, might be as well. Absolutely. You've got any questions around heat mapping just shooting through as well? Yep, we can answer those. Yeah. So there are some measuring things we could do on your platform or website. And I'm going to run through a few of those here. So measure calls to action and click through rates on those calls to action. Again, you'll need some kind of analytics set up, GA4, or whatnot to be able to do this. Scroll depth for four first clicks. So measuring. Is it a analytics right? Yes. I think scroll depth is under that. It might be under your heat mapping software to know where they first click. Bounce rate on landing pages. So finding out where your user's going. Are they coming to a site at landing page and they're just leaving straight away? And there can be a variety of reasons for that. It could be what is the product market fit from the advertising you've sent these users to? Is there one? Is the messaging clear? Is the product and service clear? Like there's so many reasons that can be a bounce rate, right? But knowing that there is one is the first step. And then video hold rate in the first two seconds. Is there a video on a page in a people watching the video, watching into the end? How far into the video are they watching? You can track all that these days, depending on what platform you're with. If you're using, I think Vimeo has a tracker that can tell you straight away, are they leaving it minute one and not watching the other four minutes? Or whatnot. How dare they? How dare they? No, dare they. Well, it needs to be interesting and captivating. It does. It absolutely does. Again, higher professional. Yes. To do that for you. Here's the shift. Attention is not a personality trait. It's a design outcome. People follow cues. If you don't provide cues, they leave. Attention follows cues. One action for the list of this week. Pick one high traffic page on your website. Run a three second test. Then remove one distraction and make one action obvious. That's thing shift. I'm Clint. I'm Leanne. One idea, one shift in under 30 minutes. If this changed how you think, share it with someone who makes decisions for a living. And follow things shift on all the socials. Don't forget to like and subscribe, so you don't miss what shift is coming up next week. See you in the next episode. See you soon. [MUSIC PLAYING] This is a much-made media production.