Visual Aesthetics of E-Commerce Websites: An Eye-Tracking Approach

Presenter Information

Ilias Pappas, Norwegian University of Science and TechnologyFollow
Kshitij Sharma, École Polytechnique Fédérale de LausanneFollow
Patrick Mikalef, Norwegian University of Science and TechnologyFollow
Michail Giannakos, Norwegian University of Science and TechnologyFollow

Location

Hilton Waikoloa Village, Hawaii

Event Website

http://hicss.hawaii.edu/

Start Date

1-3-2018

End Date

1-6-2018

Description

This study adopts four facets of visual aesthetics (i.e., simplicity, diversity, colorfulness, craftsmanship) to explain how they relate with users’ gaze patterns, based on how much they fixate on certain points, as well as how fast and how much distance their eyes cover. On a sample of 23 experienced users in online shopping, we collect eye-tracking data while looking at high, neutral, and low appealing websites, and then register their perceptions on visual aesthetics towards those websites. Findings show different patterns of gaze behavior related with users’ perceptions on visual aesthetics. Short fixations with high saccade show high simplicity, while high fixation variance and high backtrack shows high diversity. Short fixations with high backtrack show high colorfulness. Low saccade velocity with high skewness shows high craftsmanship. We contribute towards the need of automatizing the process of understanding users’ perceptions of visual aesthetics, as we might be able to predict the user behavior in real time in the future.