Event tracking is a method of data gathering which can provide valuable insight into the performance of your digital signage campaigns. An event could be anything from a button press to a barcode scan, but in the end should equate to some important measure of the success of your signage. We have incorporated event collection and analytics into our product which, in addition to our audience measurement, is able to provide a more complete picture of user engagement.
AdHawk Analytics
Kiosks are an ideal application for event tracking since it's user driven. Each interaction could be recorded as an event along with corresponding dwell times giving insight into which sections attracted the most attention. Event tracking is not constrained to user driven scenarios, however. It may be that you wish to record RFID tags to help determine which products are most popular in a lift-and-learn scenario.
Event tracking is very useful in it's own right, but combined with audience analytics it becomes possible to get a complete conversion funnel. Audience measurement can tell us how many people looked at the display along with age range, gender, dwell time, etc. Event tracking can tell us how many of those people actually engaged with the display and for how long. Segments of this data can be created using advanced filtering within AdHawk which is then applied to the funnel chart for visualization.
Funnel diagram with audience and event segments
Instrumenting your signage with event tracking is as simple as adding a single line of script to your template. We also have a REST API option for use cases outside the player or for embedded web based content.
Revel Digital partnered with ViewSonic at InfoComm this year to showcase our complete stack of smart retail solutions. We thought it would be beneficial to demonstrate the entire customer experience from product discovery through to purchase. Of course there are countless ways to drive customer engagement, but for our demo we chose to use lift-to-learn combined with audience analytics and screen synchronization to achieve not only a great customer experience, but also provide the prospective retailer with valuable analytic data.
Demonstrating the Smart Retail CX
The Concept
The ideas behind 'smart retail' entail many varied strategies for improving the customer experience through technology. Although the focus is generally on the customer, it's also important to recognize the benefits to the retailer as well. Since most of the technologies involved are connected devices, it becomes possible to gather a number of metrics related to the entire customer flow. With access to this data the retailer is able to easily determine over/under performing products, effectiveness of the marketing, audience analysis including age and gender, and even conversion rates for individual products (ie. products engaged vs. products purchased). We wanted to demonstrate all of these aspects of a smart retail implementation in order to provide a more complete picture.
The Hardware
A wide range of displays from ViewSonic were used in the demo from a 96" all the way down to a 9". Most of these were 'smart displays' with integrated Android OS allowing us to run Revel Digital software right on the display with no additional hardware. We also utilized a 'smart shelf' display for the middle of the booth. These types of displays are designed to mount directly to the front edge of store shelving.
The lift-to-learn shelving incorporates an RFID reader along with dynamic LED lighting. The shelves detect the presence (or absence) of an item which triggers the lighting within the shelf to change color along with sending a signal to our software.
Every shelf in the booth is instrumented with lift-to-learn technology
The Customer Experience
It was important to implement all aspects of the customer experience in order to help the visitors to our booth quickly visualize the concepts involved. For this we created the following:
Smart shelving for detecting product engagement
Large poster wall for product details
Check-out display for making the product purchase
Audience triggered advertisement
When a product is lifted, each display will transition to product specific functionality. The poster wall will show product details and the check-out display will allow the customer to make the product purchase. Replacing the product on the shelve transitions back to attract modes. Each shelf also indicates it's state by changing color. This makes it easy to identify the shelf associated with the product. The centered display was running our audience analytics software which showcased the ability to modify display content based on viewer metrics including age and gender. It also included some visualizations (charts and smiley face) to underscore the ability of Revel Digital to perform playlist modification and audience measurement in real-time.
Smart Shelving with RFID and LED integrated
The Retailer Experience
For the retailer it's the data which is most valuable. A number of data points were collected over the course of the show including the following:
Audience metrics including impressions, age, gender, dwell time
Product interactions
Product purchases
Using the Revel Digital Adhawk analytics tool we were able to show not only the audience profile, but also which products were interacted with and which products were ultimately purchased.
AdHawk analytics of the show data
From this we are quickly able to determine some interesting data points:
7858 to visitor impressions
4086 unique visitors
4 second average dwell time
The most active hour of the entire show was Thursday at 10AM to 11AM with 650 impressions
The majority of visitors were in the 25-34 age range followed by 35-44
Most visitors actively watched the display for between 5 to 10 seconds at a time
56% of the visitors were male, 8.3% female
852 total product interactions
Most product interactions occurred on Thursday from 10AM to 11AM which correlates with audience metrics
117 customers added a product to the shopping cart
We can also utilize our funnel chart capability to determine the conversion percentage, in this case for the shelf containing the Bluetooth speaker.
Funnel chart indicating conversion rates for the bluetooth speaker
Here we see there were 5066 viewers, 167 of those picked up the product, and 21 of those ultimately added the item to the shopping cart.
It's easy to see how a retailer could take advantage of all this data.
Conclusion
It was another great InfoComm for us and would like to thank ViewSonic for including us once again in their booth. As always we will be pushing hard to create the next best thing in digital signage and hope to have more great solutions to showcase next year!
See what's new and check out our complete smart retail stack at InfoComm 2019!
We are partnering with ViewSonic and will be showcasing our smart retail solutions including a full customer experience from product discovery through to purchase.
We've added a new transition type to the Slideshow zone called Pan / Zoom which adds subtle movement to the slide for the entirety of the slide duration. This effect is also known as the Ken Burns Effect as it is used extensively by the filmmaker in his documentaries. Note that this is not technically a 'transition' since the effect is continuously running, the actual transition between slides is a cross-fade.
To use the effect just select Pan / Zoom from the list of available transition types in the Slideshow Zone.
We've recently added a new menu gadget to improve on the style and menu specific functionality of our existing spreadsheet gadget. As with our spreadsheet gadget, this new gadget relies on Google Sheets to provide the menu item data, but also includes menu specific options for layout, styling, and even dynamic pricing columns.
Menu gadget with centered layout
To help you get started there are some new sample menu templates in our template gallery, or simply add the gadget to any of your existing templates. With this gadget you get a number of predefined layout options to choose from, which makes formatting a breeze no matter the style you are after. Text is easily styled as well with support for Google Fonts.
Another great feature is the ability to customize the number of pricing options. For example, if you wanted to add an Extra Large option, just add a new pricing column to your spreadsheet along with the associated prices. Headers for each price option is customizable as well.
Happy new year! To welcome 2019 we have added some new features and improved some others.
Stock Photos, Video and Clipart
We've added the ability to import stock media courtesy of OpenClipart and Pixabay. The new options are available in the New Media menu and also in the template designer.
New import options for stock media
Browse the available media, then click an item to import into your account. Use the filter options to search various media types including photos, illustrations, vector images, and video.
Advanced filtering for quickly finding media
Media Uploads in Template Editor
No more having to pre-upload media before designing your template. It's now possible to add new media directly within the template editor.
Media Filtering
Advanced filtering options are now available for media selection dialogs and will be incorporated into other areas of the CMS as well. Click the filter icon to show the available options.
Find the new filtering options by clicking this icon
Improved AdHawk Audience Analytics
We've improved the performance and accuracy of our audience analytics tool, as well as added some new visualizations. It's now possible to view the reach and average dwell time of individual media items. This gives great insight into which media assets are generating the most viewer interest. Our AdHawk tool is available to all Plus service level devices, and it compatible with a number of sensor types including computer vision, Bluetooth, Wifi, NFC, motion detection, and others. Contact us for more info.
Audience analytics
We have lots more in store for 2019, so stay tuned and as always we'd like to thank our customers for your continued support!
