by Sean Devlin, Front Rush
People like to look at other people. More specifically, people like to look at other people’s faces. It’s true…we are drawn to them.
We are drawn to other people’s faces regardless if they are actual pictures or if they are cartoons or simply a circle with a few lines. We are psychologically predisposed to it. Our brain ‘lights up’ when we recognize something as a face or even if something resembles a face. How many times have you seen Abraham Lincoln in a rock formation or in a cloud? It’s true and now you recognize it…and so do marketers. There is a reason that many ads have big pictures of faces. You are more likely to interact with it. Eye tracking studies (which are studies where websites track what part of the page you look at) show that users will focus on the parts of the page that have pictures of faces.
So that’s cool. You know what else is cool? People tend to look where the ‘faces’ are looking. So for example, if you have some content on a web page…let’s say it’s about a big win and you have a picture of a ‘face’ looking at that content…readers are more likely to look at that content. They are following the eye of the ‘face’. Psychology.
So how do you take advantage of this? Well think about your “marketing” materials. Are you using faces to attract the attention of your intended readers? Are your materials going to stand out relative to your competition? Something to think about.
Note: You can provide psychological techniques to get people to look at your stuff, but you need the content to back it up. You can ‘trick’ people to look at your info but if you don’t have quality content, they won’t fall for it twice.