
Written by
Brian Essex, Ph.D.The retail environment is evolving rapidly. Increasingly, retail stores are leveraging smartphone apps and other digital technology to enhance in-store experiences and to nudge users towards buying products.
Written by
Brian Essex, Ph.D.The retail environment is evolving rapidly. Increasingly, retail stores are leveraging smartphone apps and other digital technology to enhance in-store experiences and to nudge users towards buying products. While this space is challenging to design for, research methods based on observation and analysis of human behavior can help any product team better understand their opportunities. User research methods are well suited to help understand customer needs and challenges, as well as how customers interact with technology in a store environment.
To immerse myself in this space, I loaded a number of different apps on my phone and went shopping in downtown Seattle. One app that stood out was Shopkick, which lets you earn points called “kicks” and redeem them for rewards.
As I was walking down the street, I received a notification from Shopkick that I could earn kicks at the nearby Target. I walked into the store and the app popped up showing me that I had just received kicks for simply entering Target and that I could receive more kicks by scanning suggested items in the store. This was interesting; was I shopping or playing a game?
I felt like I was on a scavenger hunt as I searched the store for one of the suggestions – Diet Coke. I found the product and tried scanning the barcode. I usually find the experience of scanning barcodes awkward, because it can be hard to find the barcode and get the phone to read it properly. I received kicks for scanning the item, but not without a little embarrassment that I was pointing my phone at an item on the shelf.
Later, I walked into Macy’s and received another notification from the app – Sale Today, 20% off. This notification really pleased me because I hadn’t known there was a sale before walking into the store. It also was a very effective way to influence my behavior.
The Shopkick app is just one example of the many apps that are bridging the brick and mortar – digital divide in retail.
Here are some ways smartphones are interfacing with the in-store experience:
These are just a few of the many ways retailers can leverage digital technology to help their brick and mortar businesses. However, it isn’t always clear what digital approach will resonate most with customers in a store.
To understand how customers interface with technology in a brick and mortar retail environment, we recommend performing research in the store in addition to or instead of traditional lab-based testing.
Lab-based testing is great for learning about usability and whether users can complete tasks. In a lab environment the moderator and participant can focus deeply without outside distractions. However, a big limitation of the lab-based environment is the large difference in context between the lab and the store. There are many things that a team may miss about in-store behavior if they only perform research in a usability lab, such as how someone feels about using their phone in a public place or what influences someone to purchase items in a physical store. While lab-based studies can help you speculate what users may do in retail environments, performing research in a store can deliver additional insights because of the more realistic scenario.
Research performed in a store can help determine the needs and desires of shoppers while shopping and the store experience is fresh in their minds. It can also help uncover how usable digital technology is in the field while customers are actively engaged in a real shopping task. Customer reactions to an app that interfaces with items in a store, for instance, may be very different when performed in the wild than in a lab. I did not anticipate that I would be embarrassed moving items around in a store to scan the barcodes, even though I had scanned items earlier at our office without feeling any embarrassment.
At Blink we use the following field research methods to understand customers’ in-store experiences:
Do you have any questions about how Blink can help you learn more about your customers’ experience in a retail environment? Please feel free to get in touch with us at [email protected].
Brian Essex works in user research at Blink UX, joining the team after attaining a Ph.D. in Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience from Vanderbilt University. He is passionate about uncovering insights from user research and brainstorming design solutions that address user needs.