It’s easy to test CTA placement on the page, user noticed or not, clicked on it or not. But what about user testing, but looking for emotions, rather than cold metrics?

I wanted to find out user’s feelings towards a banner image. Also, if it makes a difference having people in the picture. I guessed that it would.

To test the images we asked participants to select words associated with each image. To make a the test fair was important to have same amount positive and negative words. In bold are words I was looking for in the results. Words used:

• Boring
• Calm
• Confusing
• Dated
• Engaging
• Friendly
• Helpful
• Impersonal
• Inviting
• Patronising
• Reliable
• Trustworthy​

We also added a free comment box, to capture a raw data.

Once we got the results, data showed that first image- with a father and son was more preferable and felt Friendly, Reliable and Inviting. Image with a chair was described as Calm, but also Impersonal and Boring.

To sum up, having a person in the image indeed made a difference in this case. However, context is also important, this image was used for a support site, rather than a promotional page.