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Power Of The Gaze

Let's go on. Number three. The power of gays. So what's interesting about gays is that our eyes are not only how we take in the environment, but they're also cues to others how they should take into the environment, how they should take in the environment. So when we look at a face we often will bounce between their eyes or nose, their mouth and sometimes their forehead, especially in leadership positions. We bounce between their eyes and their foreheads. But in social situations or romantic situations, especially when a man is gazing at a woman, he often will follow this pattern that you see in the photo I eye nose mouth. And that is because why are they focusing so much on the eyes? We look at people's eyes because we want to see where we should look. So we look at those eyes to see, are they looking at us? And also should we follow their gaze? So before I get into the F pattern, if you ever walk down the street and seen someone looking up at the sky or towards the building, your bod...

y usually can't help but look up to see where they're looking. In fact, a little experiment that you can do is walk down the street, pause in front of a random building and look up towards the sky, purposefully see how many people walk by you. And also look up. I guarantee you people will not only look up, you might even have people stop on the sidewalk next to you and look up to ask what you're looking at. And that is because we are programmed to watch other people's gaze because they cue us to see what we should look at as well. Now there are interesting I patterns that happen online first, let's talk about the F. Pattern. When people get onto a website. The Pointer Institute has found that typically on a website specifically, we read in this F. Pattern. We start in the upper left hand corner. We quickly move across the entire top. We roll down a little bit with our eyes and then we go halfway across the middle and then down again. This is the pattern that everyone makes over and over again when they're trying to assess or get the first impression of a website and you do this all the time when you look at someone's linked in profile or their facebook page or even a website to see if you like it. This is what pattern your eyes are making to try to gauge. Do I like this website? Do I trust this website? So smart websites actually design their websites around this natural pattern. For example, here's one by more soda. So you start up in the upper left hand corner and guess what, That's where their med main headline is. Less. Pop more fizz, You go across the top and hopefully you read less, pop more fizz and you see this really cool graphic, you go down a little bit and you see their next there subheading, we mix fresh designs, smart thinking and robust code to create websites that help people get help people get things done online, right? So they've actually built their headlines into people's natural, I guess why did they do that one? They wanted to make their website intuitive and comfortable, right? If they're designing websites, they want to show people we work with you, We work into the way you naturally work, we want you to be comfortable with us. And they also want to get people to read their headlines. We spend so much time writing our headlines and writing things are linked in profile, our facebook page, we want people to read them. And so one way that you can encourage people to read your websites or your profiles is to put them into people's natural gaze pattern. We do this on our website. So if you go to science people, you'll notice that on every page we have this headline. So we have the star in the upper hand corner where we want people to read, be the most memorable person in the room. Then we have them sort of look at this picture across the top, scroll down a little bit and we want them to read. Get free tools to increase your social influence. Get it right. So we hope they'll film their name and email. We would like to fit into people's natural gaze the way that they naturally use a website that makes people more likely to read our headlines and more likely people to sign up for our newsletter. So we also look at what we looked at when we change our website is how many clicks people do on the I'm ready buttons and they get it buttons, how much time they spent on the website and how many subscribers we get. As soon as we modified our website, all of these things went up because we were fitting our brand into their into your natural way of using a website and that's what you want. You want it to fit naturally integrating technology into human behavior. The second aspect of gaze is we follow gaze direction. As I mentioned at the beginning part of this section is that we look at other people's gaze to figure out where we should be gazing. So gaze prompts action. So here's a website by Remi it's 80 is actually a box and overlay box that he had. Very, very clever. So what he did is you start up at his face, do you actually start with him? He is his brand, that's very smart. You start up with him immediately you go over and he has a headline place a little bit far over. Are you ready to live a rich life? And he is actually looking in the direction of his headline. What happens there? It makes you as the reader look at his eye gaze and follow his eye gaze to read his own headline. He's actually prompting you in two ways. He's fitted into the natural f pattern. But he also has prompted you to then go read his headlines and read all of the buttons he has over on the right hand side, earn more money. Find your green jobs, save more money so that gaze direction prompts you to go over to the right hand side to continue over with that gaze. Same with these websites. Just a couple different examples of how people have done it. So here look at her eye gaze, she's actually gazing at that headline. Housing works showed me I could stand on my own two ft and she's gazing at her headline. And then you have this wedding website where you have there for excellence in a wedding venue. And then you look over and then the woman, the bride is actually looking back up towards the headline. If you look at that bride, she's looking back up towards that headline. So it makes you want to read that headline again. Quick question from ERic that came in on the forums. Eric asked if you hire a photographer to take photos of your keynote or speech, what angles are framing would you advise them to shoot for so that you have the most compelling images to use your digital brand? Oh my gosh, I love this question. If you are ever speaking in front of a live audience, even if you're teaching in front of a classroom, it's so good to have those social proof pictures of you speaking. So even if you get a friend, photographer taking pictures of you, it's so important to be able to put those on your on your website, on your profile. What you want to do is you want to have a couple different shots first. You want to have the shot that's from the left and the right. So as you notice on my website, I have my gaze actually glancing back over towards my headline. I think so, I'm actually looking back over towards my headline. So Maggie Hudson is my photographer, she's amazing. If you're in Portland, she's honeysuckle photography. What she did was she not only took a picture on this side of me, she also took picture on the other side of me, she also went behind me. So if you're having a photographer, take pictures of you, you also want to get the picture of you teaching, looking out into the audience with the audience, looking back at you. So either side as well as behind is what you want to get if you're doing that. Good question. Thank you. Eric. Uh so you can see here uh they are reading the headline and she's looking back towards the headline to make you read it. We do this on all of our websites, on all of our articles. So we will often do headlines in clever ways to try to help gays gauge the gaze of where we want you to look. So we did a post on the science of lying where I was looking over at my headline. I often will put this picture up of me looking down when I really want people to scroll down and read because we can't help our brains want to see what's down there, right? If I'm looking down there, our brains are like, what else is down there? It's part of our brain wants to keep going and wants to keep seeing down the other way. I know this is a kind of weird because in the gaze section it's a gesture section because our gaze and our gestures are very closely tied. You can also encourage people to look a certain way with your hands, with your gestures with pointing. So, for example, here's a website by Marie for leo and on her about page she does this really interesting thing where you are looking at the all about the inside scoop and she's looking down at her content which makes you want to look down and read her content. And she's also pointing back up towards her headline. She also kind of pointing down as well. It's a very clever photo. I don't even know if she did this on purpose or not, but it's actually a great way this photo is the perfect way to get people to understand the headline and to keep reading down her gaze and her direction makes us want to follow what she's doing. Here's another clever way that someone used pointing in direction. So graphic design genius is what can we create for you. And he actually they put a picture of someone pointing with pencils, which drives you back over to that headline. So for those of you who don't have websites or just, you know, on personal profile pictures, it's interesting when you're on websites to see how they use gaze gesture and direction to drive your actions. I find that fascinating. You know, the hidden psychology behind websites, we also do this as well. So when you sign up to our newsletter, we have a picture of me pointing over because I really want you to join our party on twitter. So I point over to it, follow us on twitter, just a way to, it's like underlining or emphasizing your words. So I believe that when we're using these kind of gays and gesture cues, I think the difference between persuasion and manipulation is intent. My intent is to a make it easier for you to understand what you should do next. And if you don't want to, that's totally okay. So all of these when you see like this little monkey guy, how are public school teachers chain trained? They actually use this interesting gesture where he's holding this flashlight and immediately your eyes bounces up to the you have the right to know from the yellow and the gesture is that in the best possible way we're using our powers for good and not evil, right? We're using these tricks to make it easier for people to use our website and to take action and if they choose so great, if not, that's okay too. So here's a couple of challenges for you eliminate confusing gaze cues. Any gaze away from content. Oftentimes I'll see websites where people are looking off into the distance, away from their headlines, away from their content. You're literally begging people to click away from your content when you do that, because you're saying if I'm not even looking at it, why should you look at it? Right? It's a it's a disengagement Q confusing gesture queues where people don't know quite what they're supposed to do next. What you can consider adding the F pattern, gays and gesture to headlines are your most important points and gazing and gesturing for action.