Get Better Results With Biometric Testing

Data-driven analysis has long been a pillar of support in digital marketing. But as our online experiences become more user-centric, the time has come to take a step back and really consider how people actually feel about your online offering. 52 percent of users say the main reason they don’t return to a website is due to the design and content. With stats like these, it’s more important than ever to create a user experience customers actually enjoy.

Biometric testing has been around for a number of years, but it’s still relatively new and unused in the marketing landscape. One of the few ways to gather honest user insight, it fits hand in hand with delivering impactful campaigns. So, how can you best use it to enhance your digital marketing? Let’s dive in…

What is Biometric Testing?

What people say is often different to what they feel. But one thing is for sure, customers expect a positive online experience and research is an essential part of making this happen, allowing you to get to the nitty gritty of what your customers really want.  

Understanding your customer’s behaviour, their wants, needs and desires, can be the key to many business wins – think increased conversion rates and profit for starters. Do they engage with your website the way you want? Do they respond positively to your email campaign? Is your website creating a negative user experience? Why are they abandoning their shopping cart?

Biometric can provide the answers to your user experience (UX) troubles.

The different types of Biometric Testing

• Facial expression recognition: Facial recognition recognises a user’s real-time facial emotions based on whether they like what they’re seeing, basic emotions and as many as 15 facial expressions.
• EEG (Electroencephalography): This method capitalises on our brains electric signals which we use to communicate. We can shed light on what’s happening in a user’s mind when they’re interacting with various parts of your website.
• Eye tracking: This feature tracks what your users are looking at and when. Heat maps are then used to show the areas of your pages gaining the most or least attention.
• Pupil dilation: Pupil dilation can measure how hard your brain is working. Teaming this with eye tracking, an understanding is created around which areas of your website your users are struggling with.
• Galvanic skin response (GSR): Emotions aren’t always shown through facial expression. GSR measures emotional responses through skin’s electrical currents making it a great tool for picking up on reactions users are unaware they’re even feeling.

How can you apply biometric testing to digital marketing?

Did you know, approximately 90 percent of decision-making is subconscious and based on emotional responses? Battling in competitive markets means it’s getting harder to capture and keep the short attention span of your audience.

Who wants to spend time, effort and money creating a website only to find it isn’t performing? With biometric testing, make sure you get plenty of bang for your buck!

Ensuring your online offering performs at its best can increase your competitive edge.

Delving under the surface, past what people say, you can analyse real responses, emotions and characteristics to gain valuable emotional data. Catering to your audience’s emotions, you can optimise your brand, UX and customer engagement, lowering the associated cost of acquiring new traffic and increasing the performance of your contributing channels.

Biometric testing and customer intelligence

Have your customers become immune to your brand’s messaging? With exposure to more marketing channels and ads than ever before, you need to cut through the noise. Empathetic marketing can be used, focusing on emotions to drive conversions with content that resonates. But to do this, you need customer intelligence. This is where biometric testing can help.

Biometric testing can uncover who your customers really are and what motivates them. Allowing you to develop detailed customer personas, you can align your business offering to your customers, creating relevant and authentic content that considers their pain points and interests. Empathy shows your audience you understand them, and who doesn’t get a warm fuzzy feeling when you feel cared about?

Biometric testing and UX

Biometric testing uses extensive testing processes to assess the difficulties users encounter on your website. Using these tests, barriers to conversion can be identified and then removed making it a key method extensively used in CRO. Improving this buying journey helps create a positive user experience, ensuring your customers return time and time again, increasing your bottom line and customer loyalty.

Biometric testing and ad performance

The stakes can be high when advertising falls flat. Both budget and resource can be wasted on ad creatives and placement, as well as the cost of ongoing ad campaign maintenance.

Biometric testing reveals a new layer of insight beyond traditional measures, reactions can create more relevant and therefore more effective ads. Eye tracking in particular, is an essential measure for ad testing as it demonstrates how respondents visually consume and react to ads, uncovering if key elements are missed. For example, an ad which aims to create excitement around a product may use a fast-paced creative. However, upon testing, the user’s visual attention may scatter and slowing down the sequence may be beneficial.

If your aim is to increase conversion rates, biometrics is a technology you can’t afford to ignore. Alongside your services and products, an enjoyable UX is a key part of making your customers happy. Simply put, customers return to brands that give them a positive experience.

No longer reserved for industries such as security, law and finance, we expect Biometrics to become considerably more mainstream. Have you considered using biometric testing to analyse your online offering? If you want further advice on getting started or improving performance, let our team know.