A new study on website design and eyetracking (where readers’ eyes tend to travel when they are presented with text or images) reveals that men (and not specifically gay men) have a much greater inclination to check out the package than do women, based on their study of an image of baseball player George Brett:
“When photos do contain people related to the task at hand, or the content users are exploring, they do get fixations. However, gender makes a distinct difference on what parts of the photo are stared at the longest. Although both men and women look at the image of George Brett when directed to find out information about his sport and position, men tend to focus on private anatomy as well as the face. For the women, the face is the only place they viewed. Coyne adds that this difference doesn’t just occur with images of people. Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site.”
