Sinistrodextral. More likely than not a word you’ve never heard of before despite the fact that you do it virtually every day. In fact you’re doing it right now. Sinistrodextral[1] (from the Latin words for left — sinister and right — dexter) describes the directionality of how we read & write the English language: left to right. Why do we mention this? Because when it come to peer reviews, it becomes more complex than just reading left to right.

In 2020, an article titled “How consumers attend to online reviews: an eye tracking and network analysis approach” was published in the International Journal of Advertising[2]. The study found that although product-related information is most important for consumers, consumers also spend time on review-related information, particularly the review text and reviewer information. There were also differences in attention paid to different page elements for search versus experience products.

The study first identified key Areas of Interest (AOI) and then tracked study participants eye movements to see where they went on the page and where they lingered.

The figure below illustrates how readers eyes moved across the review.

The heat map[3] below shows which areas of the review drew the most attention from readers. The “hotter” the color in an area (i.e. red, orange, yellow) the more time spent looking at the area:

The 3 AOI’s (out of 11 total) viewed the most were the product picture (100%), product description (99%) and product review (96%).

So even though reviews may be straightforward, reading them is anything but.

Mathew Mandeltort
Co-Founder
ChefWorthy, LLC
www.chefworthy.pro

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[1] Dextrosinistral is the reverse, right to left.

[2] https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2019.1617651

[3] A heat map (or heatmap) is a graphical representation of data where values are depicted by color.