Market researcher YouEye goes way beyond click trails.
The Mountain View, California-based company is today launching its Experience Analytics Platform. It’s a productized version of the internal tools the firm has employed since its founding in 2011.
Users on computers, smartphones, or tablets see a popup in a site or app that offers about $20 in a coupon, cash, or other small rewards in exchange for downloading the YouEye app. If accepted, the app taps the device’s camera and microphone to record the user over the next 20 minutes or so as she explores the targeted site or app.
The user is also asked to “tell us how it was” by talking aloud, which the platform records and transcribes via speech-to-text. The resulting text description is automatically analyzed for sentiment and other factors. At the end of the session, the YouEye app turns itself off.
Remotely-located, trained analysts watch and analyze the transmitted video for such human behaviors as frustration, confusion, or satisfaction. A video highlight reel, along with a detailed analytical report, is then sent to clients.
“We turn [user experience] into a behavioral metric,” CEO Malcolm Stewart told me.
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In an example use case, YouEye conducted a brand analysis for an unnamed telecom provider.
We “found a tremendous amount of distrust of [that] industry,” he said, and “gave them a set of recommendations to tell a story how you’re unique, how your billing process is different, [and how you should] build the brand relationship.” The company implemented the recommendations, he said, resulting in a 30 percent sales conversion rate lift.
Competitors at the high end of such user testing, he said, include WPP’s Kantar, a large traditional research vendor. They generally take six to 12 weeks on an assignment, Stewart said, and pricing begins at $75,000. YouEye’s assignments, by contrast, generally occur over five to ten business days and range from $8,000 to $15,000.
On the other end, he pointed to outfits like UserTesting.com but said they do not have the same kind of behavioral toolset and cannot operate at the same scale.
But, while YouEye emphasizes human analysts to detect emotional and behavioral response, outfits like video ad platform Virool and emotion analytics provider Affectiva are using facial recognition and machine learning to automatically parse your videotaped reactions to what you see in ads, sites, and products.