What are Biometrics? 

Biometrics refers to the measurement and analysis of a person’s physical and behavioural features. In terms of its use within a digital marketing context, biometric data sources allow you to accurately understand how users interact with your website, app, or marketing collateral such as video ads. This advanced insight also gives you an idea of how they feel about the information surrounding your product or service. 

That way, you can easily make changes to your user interface to create a more satisfying user experience and understand how the unconscious emotional response of users impacts on how they use your site or engage with your brand. 

Capabilities

Our usability lab equipment combines Eye Tracking, Galvanic Skin Response, and Facial Analysis technology to give you the ultimate user insight, improve user experiences and increase your conversion rates.

Detect and analyse gaze points and emotional responses with sophisticated, integrated technology.

• Industry leading biometric technology
• Simple to set up and start testing
• Business specific usability testing methods 
• Powerful data processing for unrivalled statistical analysis

Our in-house lab

Our usability research labs in London and Colchester mean you have access to the perfect creative space for conducting user testing, focus groups and post-test analysis.

Our purpose-built research facility includes a user testing area and separate control room to achieve the optimal testing conditions.

Key lab features:

• Desktop & mobile usability testing
• User experience assessments
• In-situ observation
• Biometric data analysis
• Evaluative reports & recommendations based on testing results 

Mobile lab

We understand that we may have to travel to where your audience can be found, whether that’s an office, event or even a shop location. All of our kit is completely mobile, so we can set up at practically any location across the globe, to conduct usability research.

Along with the mobile biometric testing equipment, a Coast usability expert will be available to ensure that the setup is correct, your testing plan is optimised and that you are maximising the time investment of conducting user testing.

If you’re interested in hiring our UX Research lab, simply fill in the form with your details. Or to speak to a member of our team, contact Coast Digital today.

Biometrics FAQs 

Is the data gathered personally identifiable? 

None of the data that we gather can be traced back to a single individual, meaning that all participants are fully anonymous at the point that data analysis takes place. That way, you can be sure that the information we present to you is unbiased. 

Is there a risk of excluding people? 

There is sometimes concern around biometrics excluding certain groups of people, which can be due to factors like age or certain injuries. However, our biometrics lab is set up to be able to measure various responses, including eye tracking. This means that we can usually accurately test the effectiveness of your marketing within your target audience, despite perceived difficulties in gathering data. 

Does biometric data really help to improve marketing? 

The short answer is yes. Before we offered our biometrics lab for use by clients, we performed rigorous testing among our own marketing team to make sure that we were able to gather the data required for several tests. Since then, we have performed tests for many of our clients, which have provided valuable insight into how users interpret their marketing. This has led to proven improvements to customer journeys, conversion rates and even the emotional response to aspects such as written content, imagery, and video advertising. 

What do we need to think about before using biometrics? 

The effective use of biometric data relies on us being able to test a portion of your target audience, so the biggest thing to consider is whether you’re able to gather a testing group so that we can gather meaningful data. For website user testing we would suggest 10 people as a minimum, based on 3 user tasks within the study. For an image or video response study we recommended a testing pool of at least 30 participants.  

Can you test our employees instead of customers? 

Unless your employees are the people who will be benefiting from the changes that we suggest, we always recommend testing with a cold audience, instead of your own employees. This is because your employees will already exhibit biases that will affect the outcome of the data (such as already knowing where to find information that customers may find more difficult to find). 

We know that industry jargon can sometimes be tricky to understand. For the ultimate list of A-Z industry terms, check out our Digital Marketing Glossary.