Fabian Stelzer, EyeQuant ‘s CEO, believes there’s a science to how we view the Web. Whether on desktops or on mobile, whether we’re male or female, young or old, our eyes will be drawn to certain common elements of web design– a combination of contrasts, locations, contours and colors. Stelzer’s also sure of something else: Knowing what these common elements are, and integrating them into websites, mean ecommerce sites can snag hesitant buyers and magazines can convince readers to click on articles.

The German entrepreneur, who was previously featured in Fast Company in 2011, runs a company that counts Barnes & Noble, eBay, Google, and Nokia among its clients. EyeQuant uses algorithms based on eyetracking studies and research to evaluate web sites. Using algorithms derived from the movement of the human eye while looking at computer screens and at real-life commodities such as food and retail items, the company claims they can predict where a viewer’s attention will go when they load a web site.

Earlier in October, EyeQuant announced a $650,000 funding round that, though modest by the standards of the tech world, is admirable for a neuroscience marketing startup. While EyeQuant isn’t the only company working in the space (there are several competitors such as 3M’s Visual Attention Service and ad-oriented services such as RealEyes), EyeQuant is one of the best funded. Companies, in exchange for submitting an email address and contact information to the company’s marketers, can receive from EyeQuant almost immediate evaluations of one of their site’s URLs .

Attention and perception: best frenemies

Stelzer told me that the two main maps his company provides cover perception and attention. For EyeQuant’s purposes, perception maps predict what content users’ eyes will gravitate towards within three seconds of loading a page. Meanwhile, there’s the second metric of attention: The content users will find the most and least visually appealing.

The slide show at the top of this story shows some examples of both, culled from both the company’s clients and some of the Web’s best-known brands.

Google–Attention

In the case of Google, users’ eyes gravitate towards a logo, which then steers them towards the main event–the search box.

Amazon–Preception

The eyes of Amazon users veer towards the center of the screen and clearly identifiable clusters of graphics and boldfaced text. This is the sort of insight marketers want to know in order to optimize sales.