Generation Y, web design, and eye tracking

Generation Y (age 18-31) is a very large and economically powerful generation. containing eighty-two million people and spending S200 billion annually It is not surprising that companies are interested in gaming the patronage of this group, particularly via the web Surprisingly, very little research into making web pages appealing to this important demographic has been done This paper addresses this need through two sepal ate studies The first, an online survey, provides evidence that our proposed score for predicting the visual appeal of web pages reflects the self report measure of what pages Generation Y likes To mime these findings, an eye tracking study is conducted using the pages that were most and least liked in Study 1 Participants' eye movement is tracked while browsing these pages, providing evidence of what attracts their attention The results of these two studies suggest that Generation Y may prefer pages that include a main large image. images of celebrities, little text, and a search feature This research has important implications (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved