The Future of Retail is Now
Media release
16 July 18
What is the psychological response to shopping habits? what drives the behaviour behind purchasing? Knowing this information could put a retailer at a distinct advantage in terms of designing the shopping experience for customers and increasing those all-important sales.
The challenges facing customer engagement are universal and at present pertinent online. While the perception is that online is king of retail, the truth is it is becoming harder and harder for online retailers to stake a claim, especially in an environment dominated by giants. Understanding customer behaviour and what drives decisions when purchasing is the holy grail of information for retailers. Award winning Ashford based start-up, Space Between, have developed the UK's only biometric user experience lab to capture customer engagement, and provide the answers to those questions.
While sounding like something out of science fiction films like ‘Minority Report', this is science fact. The biometric user experience lab is a data capture system that records human response through emotional arousal and stress reactions. It does this by monitoring skin sweat, detecting emotional responses through facial expression analysis, and attention analysis through eye tracking. The biometric user experience lab is portable and quick to set up. Space Between take a sample of customers as part of a focus group and invite them to use either a client's website or a competitor website, depending on the information the client wishes to capture, then monitors individual reactions through a series of tests and questions, and gathers quantitative and qualitative data.
"All we need to set up our mobile lab is a quiet room with good lighting. We want a relaxed environment so we can quickly build rapport with our test group, to track genuine responses. We want those taking the test to think and act as though they were actually completing an online task such as buying some goods or finding something specific. The whole process takes an hour per person." said Luke Frake, Director of Development at Space Between.
Each response provides information that is unique and insightful. Eye-tracking will highlight if users are missing or skimming over important pieces of content while also identifying areas where users are spending more time. Facial Expression Analysis captures expressive emotion through the different forms of facial expressions and body language. The face displays a full range of expressions which can be linked to emotions. During a typical session, Space Between monitors 34 different facial landmarks and identifies up to 20 individual facial expressions which are mapped to seven emotions - anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, sadness and surprise. The final part of the jigsaw is GSR, or Galvanic Skin Response, electrode sensors attached to fingers measure electrical skin conductance through sweat caused by emotional response.
All of this data is captured by Space Between who then produce a detailed, but easy to digest, report highlighting actions, such as where any potential problems might be and how to resolve them. This method has led to increases in conversion rates, for some clients, of over 150%.
ENDS
For further information please contact Darren on 07958 304375/01634671167 or email: Darren.Laws@zesttheagency.com
Award winning Ashford based tech start-up, Space Between added ‘Start-Up of the Year' at this year's KEiBA awards.
A group of coders, developers and creative geeks who know a thing or two about great website development and mobile app design. Space Between was founded by three developers Marcus, Luke and John who shared a vision for a digital agency based on its people.