Neuromarketing in the Digital Age: The Direct Relation between Facial Expressions and Website Design

Abstract

User experience (UX) is key in the immediate and future relationship between the client and business. Achieving a satisfying UX can only be achieved by understanding the wishes and user needs. The following study is carried out as an improvement tool for a Mexican coffee company. The objective is to achieve greater efficiency, attraction, and engagement on the part of the user. The main question is whether the new dynamic website design can directly increase the valence of user emotions compared to the static website design. To answer this question, 39 participants were exposed to the two different web page designs and elicited the following emotions using eye tracking and facial expression analysis (FEA) techniques: joy, anger, surprise, fear, contempt, disgust, sadness, neutral, positive, and negative. Through a Wilcoxon signed-rank test, the results showed a significant increase for the new dynamic design in the following emotions; joy, anger, surprise, disgust, fear and neutral. Thus, five of the seven basic emotions had a significant change that could lead to greater attraction and commitment on the part of the user and also influence, either consciously or unconsciously, their decision when interacting with the company.

Keywords

• neuroscience
• marketing
• neuromarketing
• user experience
• emotions
• eye tracking