6 Things people do when they interact with a brand’s Facebook Timeline

When Facebook rolled out Timeline for brands it was a pretty big deal. Some companies went all out, including their entire history, others went for spectacular cover images. A few weeks on, how have ordinary users reacted to the change?

As it turns out, most people don’t really notice how snazzy your cover image looks, they really like a current timeline and are more likely to interact with your brand if one of their friends does too.

Those are some of the findings of a study conducted by a usability company called SimpleUsability. The company conducted the study by recording eye movements and actions while users browsed the timelines of some of the world’s biggest brands, including American Express, Pizza Hut, Coca-Cola, GAP, Coldplay and Manchester United

The team reckons the method it used meant could see exactly what elements each user was drawn to, distracted by and engaged with.

The company says it also worked with the subjects to try to understand the decisions they took, replaying their activity to users, showing where and what they looked at and asking appropriate questions to determine their behaviour and choices.

1. Cover images aren’t as important as you might think
SimpleUsability reckons most users didn’t notice even when a brand’s profile and cover images were creatively combined, even when working together to form one image – such as on the Pizza Hut and Coca-Cola pages. In fact, many users disregarded the header as “advertising space”.

Users also naturally scroll down. The research showed that other than to orientate themselves (understanding what brand page they were on), users paid little attention to both the cover and profile images on the page.

They generally saw it as a corporate message space and quickly scrolled down, which removed it from their screen.

2. Companies and their histories are interesting
Users were interested in exploring the “About” section of brand pages, to find out more about the particular brand. They said this sort of information was often difficult to find on an official website.

It is worth incorporating your company’s history into the timeline. People are interested in the opportunity to discover a brand’s history, navigating along the timeline in the sidebar to discover more.

While a brand’s history is of interest to users, some were confused as to how content could exist in the timeline that pre-dated the existence of Facebook.

3. The Timeline has to remain current and can cause confusion
Regular updates are more important than ever. No users scrolled back down the timeline further than a month.

There were two reasons for this. Firstly, some considered themselves to be up to date on topics like sport and music.

Secondly, breaks in the timeline appeared when new sections loaded. Users were either put off by the loading time and stopped scrolling, or they assumed that was the point at which the timeline ended.

4. Users take notice of friend interactions with a brand
Someone’s friend liking a brand can sway them towards liking it too, but only if they would have been interested in it in the first place.

Beneath the box highlighting the number of a user’s friends who like a brand page, there is frequently a status update or comment from a user’s friend who has posted regarding the brand, but not necessarily on the page.

Where they appeared, users were interested in this content and were willing to interact with it, if it was considered to be timely.

5. Pinned posts aren’t having much of an effect
Very few brands actually use pinned posts and it makes no difference for those that do.

According to SimpleUsability, “no users realised the pinned post was intended to be highlighted”.

It reckons a clearer definition of a pinned post as a feature would help or a unique use of content that works with other elements of the layout.

Simple Usability reckons that pinned posts could be a lot more effective if they followed a model more similar to promoted tweets on Twitter.

6. Users aren’t interacting with apps…yet
Other than to click-through and see photo albums, most users don’t interact with the row of apps. Significantly, nearly all failed to spot the arrow which makes all of the available apps visible.