Company that’s keeping track of the way we make life decisions

Based in Leeds, SimpleUsability uses its eye-tracking technology to offer insights into how people make decisions, which helps its clients, across sectors including retail, financial services and travel, and target their customers appropriately.

In the past, the firm focused on web usage, with participants coming into its laboratories and completing specific tasks on a client’s website while the eye-tracking technology recorded what action they took.

Judith Doherty looks after marketing and business development for SimpleUsability, whose clients include Leeds-based supermarket Asda, insurer Aviva and travel firm Jet2, which operates flights out of Leeds-Bradford International Airport.

Mrs Doherty explained: “In the instance of Asda, it could be that we’re getting somebody in to complete their weekly shop at Asda.com and we give them the space to do what they would naturally do in selecting the various products, putting them into the basket and basically leave them uninterrupted while they do that so that it’s a very natural task and we are really understanding what typical behaviour would be if they were at home doing that task.”

Then, with the help of the eye-tracking technology, SimpleUsability plays back to the participant exactly what they did.

“So if there was a situation where they were in a particular category, so it could have been fresh veg, hovering between two products, why did they hover at that point, what was their mindset, and what made them select one product over another?” added Mrs Doherty.

“So we use the eye-tracking as a means of getting them to articulate why they did the things that they did, because from that evidence we are then able to identify if there’s a particular way a client could be merchandising better online and if there are any particular barriers to conver-sion.”

SimpleUsability continues to monitor participants on the web using its fixed eye-tracking technology, but it has also expanded into new areas thanks to investment in state-of-the-art eye-tracking glasses.

In its financial year to the end of August 2012, the firm spent around £100,000 on new technology, including the high definition glasses, meaning the firm could monitor people on the go – in a shop, on a tablet, on a mobile phone or smartphone.

Mrs Doherty said: “It started out very much around website usability but obviously we’ve moved on a great deal and websites are no longer the be all and end all so we’ve actually got technology now which is the same eye-tracking technology but in glasses.”

Managing director and founder Guy Redwood, who has worked in the digital sector for nearly 20 years, said: “We are very famous for eye-tracking, the way that we use eye-tracking religiously in our research, and about two and a half years ago we were at a conference, it was a retail conference, and they just kept talking about mobile, and we realised that nobody had a mobile proposition for research so we created various ways of monitoring people using phones through eye-tracking.”

SimpleUsability bought the glasses from German technology company SMI and since the investment they have represented a “significant” growth area for the firm, said Mrs Doherty.

Turnover is expected to be just under £1m in this financial year – the year to the end of August 2013, up from £700,000 last year and £350,000 the year previously, while profitability is “good compared with sector performance”, said Mr Redwood.

Meanwhile, the firm’s headcount has gone from seven to 15 in the last year.

Founded in 2001 at York Science Park, SimpleUsability moved to Leeds in 2005 and has since taken on more office space at its home at the Round Foundry Media Centre to cope with its growth.

Mr Redwood said: “You invest in technology, you have an edge.

“Our customers were quite apprehensive the first time they used the eye-tracking glasses, because they trusted us and they liked what we used to do, and we had to say, ‘trust us, this is phenomenal’, and they were just blown away.”

Mrs Doherty explained that as businesses look at their analytics and they see that more and more visits are coming from mobile devices they want to explore exactly how their website or app performs, or whether there is an appetite for an app to be developed, if they don’t already have one.

“The eye-tracking glasses are great for the mobile world, the tablet world, but also for in store, because you can put the glasses on someone and get them to do a full shop around a supermarket or any other retailer and we just get tremendous clarity on exactly what they’re looking at and why they make the decisions they do at point of purchase,” she added.

But Mr Redwood stressed that technology is “just an enabler”, adding: “It’s what we do with it. Our methodology is really unique to us and our customers know that.”

The company uses a range of other technology to carry out its service, including headsets which monitor brain activity. They see whether the brain is active or whether it is archiving, for example.

Where television advertising is concerned, it is during the latter that a firm might not want to release its brand or messaging, Mr Redwood suggested.

“The brain is at its worst point for storing thing into its long-term memory.

“You want to have the brain in an active or open state, that’s when people remember.”

Mr Redwood recently went on a trade mission with UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) to New York to explore opportunities in the United States.

The business already does some international work, but wants to grow in global markets.

Switzerland, Mr Redwood said, could act as a good base for launching into other territories in mainland Europe.

Mr Redwood said: “We are really keen to grow internationally.

“Commercially, it makes sense as the bigger brands, the multi-nationals like to engage with research agencies who are in key territories so they can do a global piece of research.

“And as a business our worth is a lot more than just being in the UK.”

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