Since the late 1990s theory drawn from the vision sciences and Gestalt psychology has guided the visual design of questionnaires. A considerable amount of research has been conducted that shows that altering questionnaire visual design can change response distributions and data quality (Dillman, Smyth, and Christian 2009; Jenkins and Dillman 1995; Tourangeau, Couper, &
Conrad 2004). However, this research is limited in what it can tell us about how different visual designs influence responses. In other words, the evidence for how visual design matters is largely circumstantial. Eye-tracking technology gives us the opportunity to overcome this challenge. A handful of studies have used eye tracking to better understand how respondents see and process a questionnaire (Galesic et al.2008; Lenzer, Kaczmirek, and Galesic 2011). In this paper, we will explore how visual design in response options assists respondents in processing survey questions. Specifically, we will analyze eye-tracking data to examine the effects of Web survey response option experiments that include symbolic language, grid response options and the use of single and double columns. Preliminary evidence from the lab shows that the addition of smiley faces to a Likert scale cause respondents to slow down when processing the given response options. By observing how respondents actually view the different versions of the questionnaire and visual aids, this study will contribute to our understanding of how and why visual design influences responses and will shed light on best practices for questionnaire design.