Gaining Attention Online: Do the Levels of Product Involvement and Website Interactivity Matter? An Eye-Tracking Approach

Abstract

Designing effective websites remains a challenging task for both academics and practitioners. Attention is the starting point of any further cognitive process. The level of product involvement and the level of interactivity in a website are examined as two variables that may have an effect on individuals’ attention. An online experiment was conducted and an eye- tracking system was employed in order to track users’ attention. Data analysis reinforces the notion that online users are goal-oriented for both high and low involvement product, since they allocate increased attention to the informational text provided in the homepage (Lee and Ahn, 2012). Moreover, it establishes that five out of six web characteristics proposed by Voorveld et al. (2011) increase the perceived interactivity under both involvement conditions. Useful insights are provided for online marketers and academics regarding the elements that make a website truly interactive