3 rules on how to use VR data analytics for your product

You’ve heard about it in the office, read about it in the New York Times, and maybe even demoed it in the NYC Samsung store — virtual reality is here and is capturing the curiosity of consumers and transforming the way businesses operate.

Marketers, gamers, teachers, entrepreneurs, producers, you name it — everyone wants a piece of the shiny new industry. Why now?

VR has been around for decades and yet, according to Google, search volume about the topic has increased by 400 percent in the past year alone. Vast technological improvements have recently equipped the industry with the proper tools to show consumers the power of immersive media to transform our world.

While the concept of virtual reality has been around since the ’60s, the actual benefits of extracting and analyzing data from VR experiences have just been gifted to the world in a big red bow. Let’s unwrap it and see if it fits.

Economic standards do not exist until industries create them; this is not accomplished until data is used for what it does best — provide answers. Whether it’s Google Analytics data for the web or Nielsen statistics for television, every company must be able to draw accurate analyses from their data.

Play counts don’t cut it in 2017. What knowledge do you gain from page views and click counts? Does a click prove actual viewability? And does a view prove engagement? Of course not. View, share, and click metrics don’t incorporate human visual perception. Thus, by not taking actual consumer actions into account, there’s no real value stemming from the data.

In contrast, effective virtual reality analytics provide you with statistics of the trends and outliers that you weren’t aware of but should be; when creating and revising your content. VR analytics provide real value in understanding your audience’s preferences and behavior. Once a deep understanding is achieved, the opportunities are endless. Refine your target market, strategy, reach or whatever it may be, because knowing your audience’s varying tastes provides answers to the questions you didn’t even know you had.

Data is the new gold standard. The New York Times stated in 2007 that people saw an average of 5,000 ads per day; imagine how many ads we see as media evolves. We live in a world full of distractions, so it’s increasingly rare to have someone’s complete attention.

Virtual reality provides the opportunity for an experience totally void of distraction, letting the user naturally engage with the experience. Use the world’s newfound enthusiasm and curiosity for VR to your advantage. Make use of the time consumers spend in this intimate world wisely by logging what users are looking at as actionable business intelligence.

Virtual reality users generate data regardless of whether or not you take action — it’s a matter of collecting and sorting the data.