Eye tracking glasses to better understand customers’ buying urges

Web marketing currently provides a wealth of statistical information on the behaviour of Internet users when faced with advertising, the relevance of a shop layout or the need to change a sales strategy. However, it is difficult to gain access to consumers’ innate behaviour, since their attitude to packaging or shelving is so subjective. Eye tracking makes it possible to study this unconscious behaviour through the customer’s visual attitude. A revolution for companies still looking for relevant and reliable marketing policies?

What is eye tracking and what are the benefits for retailers and businesses?

It goes without saying that the information provided by the habits of Internet-using consumers represents an exceptional goldmine for all marketing professionals in small or large commercial or industrial structures.

However, while customer behaviour can be predicted on the basis of the many statistics available thanks to the digital information they leave behind on their virtual journey, their ‘instinctive’ behaviour in a shop or in front of a screen is a variable datum that so far cannot really be approached.

This unconscious behaviour is often difficult to express, even for the customer himself. “Why are you more attracted by this product than by another?” or “Which type of shelf do you go to first when you enter a shop?” are questions that have often gone unanswered. Thanks toeye tracking, all these questions can now be answered!

The customer’s visual behaviour will be methodically analysed using glasses or sensors placed in direct contact with their eyes.Eye tracking can be used to map out the “hot” areas in a store – the points or products that catch the eye – and the “cold” areas – the shelves or displays that the consumer is not interested in.

Is equipping yourself with innovative, high-tech marketing tools an unnecessary or necessary cost for all businesses?

Thanks to eye tracking, the data provided by the consumer’s visual behaviour can be used to rethink shelf displays, packaging that lacks interest or even behaviour on the web. That just goes to show the immense number of possibilities that this new source of marketing information could open up for companies!

However, cutting-edge technology comes at a cost that cannot currently be considered negligible. The new version of the famous Tobii Pro Glasses dedicated to eye tracking, soon to be on the market, will feature a wide-angle sensor to create an HD video, as well as a gyroscope, accelerometer and even the possibility of sound. A jewel of marketing technology that comes at a price: €22,000 excluding VAT or an average of €800 excluding VAT per month to hire.

Eye tracking is currently a major expense for a company’s marketing policy, especially as this sum does not include the research that needs to be carried out once all the customer information has been obtained. Although there is every chance that this cost will decrease in the future, it would seem more appropriate to consider eye tracking as a marketing tool that complements our current webmarketing statistical tools.

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