Durch die Augen der Kunden: Wie deine Amazon-Angebote wahrgenommen werden und was du daraus lernen kannst

Basics of the Amazon Eye-Tracking Study

To save reading time, we refer to the first part at this point. If you are not yet familiar with the basics of the study, you can find them here.

Optimized content on the product detail page keeps customers engaged longer – and qualifies your offer as a serious purchase candidate in the first place. Those who use all content elements win.

Insights into Information Behavior on PDPs

Fig. 1: Fixation points in eye-tracking can visualize and map the test subject’s eye movements on the PDP

The “bubbles” in Figure 1 visualize each individual fixation of the eyes. This allows us to draw conclusions about how the test subject perceives the content of an Amazon product detail page. The information gained about the duration and sequence of information acquisition is particularly revealing. The subjects were placed in both a “high(er) involvement” buying situation (portable Bluetooth speaker) and a low-involvement buying situation (water bottle) – and confronted with relatively optimized PDPs as well as very plain and information-poor PDPs.

Fig. 2: Example eye-tracking heatmap of a plain PDP (left) and an optimized PDP (right)

As seen in Figure 2, for example, a consumer has more opportunities to interact with the content when there is more information. As a result, they typically spend more time on the PDP – a success from an Amazon SEO perspective and a positive signal for the algorithm about the relevance of the offer.

Another interesting finding: The absence of certain elements does not automatically lead to greater focus on other elements. Instead, the product offering was quickly dismissed as fundamentally irrelevant, so the remaining content did not receive more attention.

Fig. 3: Comparison of fixation duration on non-optimized vs. optimized PDPs

Figure 3 shows: Potential customers can be kept on PDPs significantly longer with optimized content. On average, the subjects spent twice as much time looking at the images and 40% more time reading the bullet points — presumably because the offer was generally considered more relevant. The 4 seconds fixation on the title shows that in most cases, it was read in full.

Fascinating: On content-rich offers, on average, 10 seconds more were spent reading product reviews. So, lots of content does not distract customers from reading critical reviews. Quite the contrary: good content seems to qualify an offer as a serious purchase candidate in the first place – reading reviews is then the final necessary step before completing the purchase. By informing himself about other customers’ experiences, the potential buyer reduces his perceived purchase risk and verifies whether the offer is really as good as the official content presents it.

To excel in this area, we recommend sellers offer especially friendly and accommodating customer service and well-designed after-sales processes.

If you think you can neglect other content areas, Figure 4 will prove you wrong: It shows the different information behaviors of individual consumers in the form of heatmaps shown side by side. You can see clearly that there are completely different focuses: there are users who do not read product reviews at all, others pay attention to interspersed ads, and still others read the unformatted body text of product descriptions word for word.

Our recommendation is therefore to make full use of all content opportunities and elements that Amazon offers to sellers.

Fig. 4: Different heatmaps show the heterogeneity of information intake by Amazon users

Insights into Information Intake from Images

Due to the measurement method used, viewing the product images could only be analyzed with a constant display time. This is certainly a limitation, since the participants would presumably have spent different amounts of time with the images otherwise.

Nevertheless, the following interesting facts were observed across all subjects (see Fig. 5):

1. The logo appears to be an attention magnet – as already shown by behavior on the SERP.
2. If additional valuable accessories are presented with the product, these are viewed attentively.
3. Text and functional icons also receive sufficient attention, making them well-suited for conveying information such as USPs.
4. Faces of people are usually fixated on first and for a long time—a very good way to convey an expected feeling when using the products. Additionally, showing people in images can generate a sense of sympathy and identification.

It should be considered that a long fixation on a particular image element might distract from more important content. Therefore, each image should convey only one “message.” For example, when it comes to communicating USPs or presenting potential areas of application, it might be better to avoid using models—or at least not show their faces.

Fig. 5: The cumulative heatmaps of all test subjects for selected product images from the study show some similarities in the processing of visual information among Amazon users

Further Results on SERPs

You can find more exciting insights into consumer behavior on Amazon search results pages here.

Conclusion

The most important learnings from the eyetracking study on Amazon can be summarized as follows:

• How much your offering stands out from the crowd can be measured and thus also optimized. Eyetracking studies can help with content optimization, but are only worthwhile for products with high sales potential (> 500 kEUR order volume p.a.).
• There are numerous elements on the search results page that attract attention. Not all can be actively influenced, but some essential ones such as main image, title, price, coupon, etc. definitely can.
• Sponsored Product Ads do not appear to be perceived as advertising by most Amazon users and therefore receive full attention. This gives advertisers a clear advantage over Google Ads.
• Consumers engage much more intensively with the content from other customers (product reviews) than with the official content from the seller. This underlines the high importance of very good product quality and attentive customer service.
• Product offer images receive a lot of attention and are a good way to visually communicate product USPs. Investing in sales-promoting professional Amazon images is therefore worthwhile.
• Since information-seeking behavior is very heterogeneous, you should give sufficient attention to all content elements when optimizing your listings.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)