Glossary

Eye tracking metrics

Eye tracking metrics

Eye tracking metrics are crucial for understanding human attention, behavior, and decision-making processes in contexts like marketing, UX design, and cognitive research. From heatmaps to fixation counts, these metrics provide a data-driven approach to analyzing how individuals engage with visual stimuli. Whether you're designing a website or optimizing product placement, understanding the nuances of eye tracking can make all the difference.

What are Eye Tracking Metrics and What They Say

Eye tracking metrics provide detailed insights into visual and cognitive processes. By analyzing these metrics, researchers and marketers can understand how visual content is perceived and processed.

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Most Used Eye Tracking Metrics

The most commonly used eye tracking metrics include:

  • Fixations Count: Indicates areas of interest and engagement. Higher fixation counts suggest greater attention to specific elements.
  • Fixation Duration: Reflects cognitive processing. Longer durations can indicate deeper processing or difficulty in understanding.
  • Saccades: Show how information is scanned. Short saccades suggest focused examination, while long saccades indicate broader scanning.
  • Heatmaps: Highlight areas with the most visual attention, helping to identify which parts of a stimulus attract the most interest.
  • Gaze Path: Reveals the viewing sequence, showing how users navigate through visual content.
  • Time to First Fixation: Measures initial attention and can indicate the prominence of specific elements.
  • Pupil Dilation: Associated with emotional and cognitive responses. Larger dilations can indicate higher levels of interest or cognitive load.

These metrics are essential for understanding visual attention and behavior in various contexts.

Eye Tracking Metrics Examples

Here are examples of eye tracking metrics in action:

  • Fixation Count on a Website: Tracking the number of fixations on different sections of a webpage to see which areas attract the most attention.
  • Heatmaps in Advertising: Using heatmaps to visualize which parts of an advertisement are most engaging to viewers.
  • Gaze Path Analysis in UX: Analyzing the gaze path to understand how users navigate through a software interface, identifying any usability issues .
  • Pupil Dilation in Gaming: Measuring pupil dilation to assess the emotional engagement of players during different game scenes.

These examples demonstrate how eye tracking metrics can be applied to gain actionable insights across various fields.

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Example of an Eye Tracking Software Using Eye Tracking Metrics

For example, Neurons is an eye tracking software powered by AI, which uses predictive models to simulate eye-tracking, giving you easy-to-understand insights like heatmaps, attention scores, and visual engagement patterns. These tools show what grabs people’s attention in your content—and what might need tweaking.

Metrics like Total Attention, Time Spent, and Percentage Seen dive deep into how your ads are performing. Neurons AI makes it simple to optimize your creatives so they stand out and match how people naturally behave. The result? Smarter, data-backed decisions that boost your ad performance.

By adding predictive eye-tracking to your creative process, every design choice is rooted in science. Neurons AI turns complex data into clear, actionable advice, helping you design ads that not only catch attention but keep it—delivering stronger results across your campaigns.