Dwell time

also: gaze duration

Dwell time is how long the eye stays on a region before moving on. Longer dwell usually signals engagement or difficulty; near-zero dwell on an important element means it is being skipped entirely.

Where fixations land tells you what gets seen; how long the eye dwells tells you how hard it works. A headline that holds attention for a beat is doing its job; a pricing table that gets a long, effortful dwell may be confusing rather than compelling.

Predictive models estimate the concentration of attention rather than measured seconds, but the practical read is the same: elements with strong predicted attention earn dwell, cold zones get skipped. Heatpoints' Pulse module measures real dwell per scroll band to confirm the prediction against live behavior.