What do you think website testing using mouse tracking looks like? A person who has never witnessed or taken part in such experiment might imagine that the mouse course is moving fast on the screen, and then points at the banner or “Learn more” CTA button, etc. In reality, such movements are performed by our eyes and not by the mouse course.

We don’t have to navigate lines of text with a mouse while reading the article or company’s description and we don’t have to point at the “Buy” button in order to identify its location. As you can imagine mouse tracking is a pretty useful tool, but only when combined with other neuromarketing instruments. To get consumer insights about website UI/UX, just using a mouse tracking tool is not enough.

The guru’s secret is cross-checking

By testing a website with the help of mouse tracking you can assume that the “Buy” button might be unattractive, small or painted in the wrong color. But it's only an assumption, right? To verify it you need to use something else. In this situation, eye tracking is a good choice.

For example, a heat map combined with eye tracking can show you that the user has seen the “Buy” button very clearly and even concentrated his/her attention on it several times (so nobody can say the button is unattractive). But they didn’t press it anyway. Why? To answer this question you can use facial expression analysis.

The emotion measurement tool will help you to understand which emotions were felt and when customer felt them during the test. They could be frustrated/puzzled/dissatisfied with the price indicated in the description of the product, with the picture of another product situated near or many with other reasons. That's why it's important to integrate biometric research with surveys as well.

We love to repeat it from text to text, but yes, the cross-check of data with the help of several tools can ensure the best quality of the neuromarketing research and, thus, provide researchers with really valuable and applicable insights into customers’ behavior. By the way, this infographics will help you to find out how to choose the most suitable neuromarketing tool.

Check, change and check again

There is no universal approach to data interpretation. To quote Bear Grills - “Improvise, adapt, overcome”, and we must admit that very few mottos are as relevant for the domain of neuromarketing research as his.

One cannot be sure whether it’s good or bad to render the “Buy” button in violet or acid yellow without actually applying these colors and then testing how customers react. The wider the range of tools applied to analyze the relevance of these colors, the better you will understand whether customers like it or not. Furthermore, by applying a wider range of neuromarketing tools you will be able to get more data about customers emotions, which can be further used for other research purposes and help you improve other elements of the tested object (website, advertisement material, etc).

There is no golden rule to be applied in every neuromarketing research, as it depends on the purpose of the study as well as tested objects. Depending on the project, different combinations of tools can be more or less effective. Though, the more instruments are included in collection, systematization, analysis and the cross-checking of data, the higher the chances are to receive valuable insights into customers’ behavior and thus find effective solutions to improve the tested object.