Making Eye Contact is Instinctive
Making eye contact is an innate practice we never have to be instructed to do. Infants make eye contact with their parents and are even nurtured by it.
Use eye contact to attract attention to an area of the page. Eye contact is so attractive it’s hard to resist.
Be very careful about using faces that make eye contact directly with your visitors. It can distract from your page.
Use eye contact on areas of the page that can be ignored easily. Using in the main area of the content can distract from the page.
On the web, this powerful behavior can be used to help guide your visitors to the areas where you’d like them to look. We’ve used this successfully in some of our advertising. It works well because it attracts the eye away from the main content of the page more easily.
However, while it certainly can be powerful to use photos that make eye contact, you should exercise caution as it has a tendency to—as mentioned above—guide the eye away from the rest of the page. Generally speaking, we don’t want to do this consistently. We may want to draw the eye, make the emotional connection, and then remove the stimulus to guide the visitor to the next step.
Tips to Use Eye Contact Effectively
Use it to guide a visitor to a video. Their eyes will be drawn to the video, and can quickly scan any information within close proximity to help them decide if they should watch it. Upon completion of the video, showing a different screen that does not make eye contact allows them to then take in the rest of the page without distraction.
Use it in a home page slider. Make eye contact with your visitors, enabling you to display a very short message, or to convey an emotion briefly. Then remove the distraction with a less invasive next slide, allowing them to take in the rest of your site.
Fade the image out after a few seconds. For instance, on a blog: fade out the author block after a few seconds, or when not moused over.
Use this in an area that is easy to scroll out of view. For example, you could put a picture in your header next to your phone number and contact links. It will briefly convey a caring person should they call, but allow your visitors to scroll down a few pixels to focus on the rest of your site. You create a human connection on every page, but it doesn’t distract from your page consistently.
There are many other ways to use eye contact effectively in your design, but hopefully these inspire you to find ways to insert them strategically without doing more harm than good.