Prosperity. Happiness Works.

A new Facebook eye-tracking study will give companies that wish to make an impact on Facebook food for thought.

Mulley Communications worked with the Centre for Research and Innovation in Learning and Teaching at National College of Ireland (NCI) on an eye-tracking test to see what Irish people pay attention to when using Facebook.

Using usability technology in NCI’s National e-Learning Laboratory researchers watched the eye movements of participants as they looked at their Facebook Newswalls, Profiles and Business Pages.
One of the things that any Facebook page admin for a business will wonder is how to get more fans – or people to ‘Like’ a page.

Word of mouth marketing

According to the research findings the most popular way to find out about a page is through a virtual word of mouth. Mirroring the real world, people look to their friends for recommendations and suggestions. When asked ‘how do you find out about a page’ 76% of the 40 people surveyed said when their friends recommend it. The study explains that this happens when either the user’s friend joins a page and the user can see that they have done this and then the user joins the page themselves. It also happens when a friend forwards a link onto a user.
One in five participants said they find out about pages by searching for a page themselves via the search bar. One participant commented that they heard about a page on radio and then went to Facebook to join that page.
Another quandary for many trying out social media to market and advertise their business is whether to go down the advertising route.

Advertising analysis

During testing, the gaze of 38 of the 40 test participants were analysed in three different areas/types of pages in Facebook: the News Feed page, the Profile page and a page with information about TV shows.
While users spent about 13.8 seconds on their News Wall page and 11.7 seconds on TV pages, they spent only 8.2 seconds looking at a their profile page.

Within the News Feed page itself, users spent 12.6 seconds looking at news wall (containing updates) and 1.2 seconds looking at right hand side of the page (containing Facebook updates and advert).

The research team also data to see if users looked at adverts in Facebook and which adverts on different pages received more attention. On average, across all pages, 42% of users looked at adverts. 31% of users looked at adverts shown on News Feed Wall pages, 39% of users looked at adverts on TV pages and almost double the amount of users (71%) glanced at adverts on their Profile page.

In the post test interview, one in five users said they noticed advertisements while carrying out tasks.
More than half of participants said under normal circumstances they would notice adverts. Out of 40 participants, three have purchased a product they’d seen advertised on Facebook: two of whom were female, one male.

Of those who said that they did not usually notice advertisements, most said that they are aware of the presence of adverts but did not usually pay any attention to them. Just 5% of participants said that they actively zone/blank them out.

View the full survey results at: http://mulley.ie/facebook