Webcam Eye Tracking for Monitoring Visual Attention in Hypothetical Online Shopping Tasks

Online retailers are challenged to present their products in an appropriate way to attract
customers’ attention. To test the impact of product presentation features on customers’ visual attention,
webcam eye tracking might be an alternative to infrared eye tracking, especially in situations
where face-to-face contact is difficult. The aim of this study was to examine whether webcam eye
tracking is suitable for investigating the influence of certain exogenous factors on customers’ visual
attention when visiting online clothing shops. For this purpose, screenshots of two websites of two
well-known online clothing retailers were used as stimuli. Linear regression analyses were conducted
to determine the influence of the spatial position and the presence of a human model on the percentage
of participants visiting a product depiction. The results show that products presented by human
models and located in the upper middle area of a website were visited by more participants. From
this, we were able to derive recommendations for optimising product presentation in online clothing
shops. Our results fit well with those of other studies on visual attention conducted with infrared
eye tracking, suggesting that webcam eye tracking could be an alternative to infrared eye tracking, at
least for similar research questions.