Is There a Viral Video Recipe?

For online marketers, creating a viral video often seems like winning the lottery. If it is your lucky day and you play your cards wisely (create and publish the right content at the right time), it could make you rich! There are a lot of established best practices to follow in online marketing from designing websites to using social media. However, we cannot seem to figure out why some videos become viral. Why is Grumpy Cat so popular? Is there such a thing as a viral video recipe? Read more

Eye Tracking in a Physical Store: A Case Study

For retailers, the physical store is a critical touch point with consumers. Despite this, retailers’ product display strategy remains reactive and is mostly based on past initiatives. Compared to online marketing, point of sale marketing has typically access to less data on customer behavior, especially for behavior other than the actual purchase. New technology such as mobile eye tracking can reduce this lack of objective data. Read more

imarklab’s Role in the CEFRIO’s Research Project on Equity Crowdfunding

In 2014, the CEFRIO asked imarklab to conduct usability testing for a research project on equity crowdfunding. This research was a collaboration with the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) with the intent of establishing rules regarding this practice in Quebec. The main objective was to explore this phenomena around the world and evaluate investors’ risk perception for this kind of online investment.

We are proud of our contribution to this report published last may (report available in French only) and its role in protecting investors in Quebec. This case analysis briefly describes our research process. Read more

The Sharing Economy in terms of Websites Features

“Instead of buying and owning products, consumers are increasingly interested in leasing and sharing them.” (Matzler, Veider and Kathan, 2015)

Collaborative consumption is trending. According to La Presse, web platforms related to the sharing economy are worth billions of dollars and they are emerging in all kind of industries. The best-known communities of this kind are probably Airbnb and Uber. Airbnb connects property owners who want to earn money by renting their place for short periods of time to travellers while Uber does the same for drivers and users in need of transportation. Read more

The Impact Black Friday & Cyber Monday Have on E-commerce and How to Prepare for the Big Hit

Visa and keyboard

♪Shopping, shopping time is here♪

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are right around the corner and your e-commerce business must be prepared as it is expected to be one of the biggest year yet in history. Considered to be the largest online shopping weekend of the year, more and more people resort to online purchases instead of in-stores. Can you blame them with this year’s cold?! And let’s be honest, shopping in the comfort of your home is priceless. It is warm, you do not have to look for parking, spend money on gas, no line ups at the cash and you can shop at any time of the day. That said businesses must be prepared for an aggressive increase in traffic on their website. The success of this weekend depends solely on how ready you are. Read more

Eye Track Behavior 2014: A personal account of the conference

Sponsored by Tobii, Eye Track Behavior is a small size conference dedicated to eye tracking research. Research studies accross the marketing, usability, education and medical fields using eye tracking were presented during a one and half-day conference on Sept. 11-12.

It was fascinating actually to witness how such varied expertises could still share common concerns about pixel, screen and angular spaces for a few days! Read more

Multichannel Back-to-School Shopping

The second half of September is beginning and many parents are still rushing to complete their back-to-school shopping online on multiple devices or in-store. In both cases, smartphones have probably been useful during this process. According to a recent eMarketer’s study, 59% of the American mothers intended to use their smartphone while doing their back-to-school shopping in store in 2014. Read more

Instant E-commerce Builders are multiplying on the Web

What if you could become an online store owner in five minutes?

Engaging in e-commerce used to be an enormous commitment for businesses. Then, e-commerce platforms came in the portrait and made the process easier for smaller companies. Today, this process can be quite easy. The e-commerce platforms’ offer is blooming. Every Internet user now has the possibility to launch an online store with basic transactional capabilities in a few minutes without hardly any coding required. We understand their limitations for big businesses with larger inventories or CRM needs, but they can be a suitable option for small retailers. Read more

What is a Good Social and Visual Commerce Strategy?

Facebook comes fourth for average order value

As the number of social media users drastically increased in the last years, social commerce naturally became part of any good e-commerce strategy. Business owners are slowly getting comfortable with the idea of using social networking technologies as online sales drivers. In fact, social media is now perceived as a bridge that can connect consumers to retailers. A recent research by Shopify found that Facebook was the top social commerce site worldwide. This certainly does not come as a surprise considering that being on Facebook is almost a prerequisite for most businesses. However, it seems that this popular social media is not the leader in term of average order value…

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Emotional Design and Consumer Behavior

As emotions are part of everyone’s experience, emotional design entails relating to people effectively with your product design or its interface design. The role of emotions is to help signal and reveal the unconscious processes underlying behaviors.

Therefore, if you are launching a new product or an advertising campaign, evaluating emotional engagement before its launch can help predict the success or failure of the campaign. In other words, testing elements such as visual creative elements, images, videos, and music can help identify non conscious responses from your customers, which is in turn helpful to identify branding emotional triggers. It is even more powerful and pertinent in digital contexts, where the interaction with your product or ad is enhanced or restrained by technology.

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