You’ve done the hard work. You’ve perfected the formula, honed the branding, and designed packaging that looks brilliant on your screen. But a store shelf isn't a screen. It's a battleground for attention, where dozens of competitors are vying for the same three seconds of a shopper's glance. The difference between being seen and being skipped comes down to understanding your shoppers in that critical moment of choice.
Will anyone even see your product?
It’s the single most important question, and for decades, getting an answer was a heavy lift. The gold standard involved staging physical store shelves, recruiting shoppers, and conducting interviews to reverse-engineer the "why" behind their choices. It was time-consuming, expensive, and required a mountain of coordination. Other methods emerged, from eye-tracking headsets to full-blown virtual reality simulations. But while these are fantastic concepts, their challenges—cost, scale, and accessibility—often put them out of reach for agile teams who need to move fast.
This left too many important decisions, from a simple color change to a full rebrand, up to guesswork. It meant launching with hope instead of confidence.
At aytm, we believe in helping the curious directly engage with technology to find answers. So we built our Shelf Test and Ecommerce research tests to bridge the gap between a great idea and a successful product. It’s about moving beyond what people say they’ll do and observing what they actually do in a simulated, high-fidelity shopping environment.
Find your footing in a crowded market
Think of our Shelf Test as a flight simulator for your product. It’s a space where you can test every variable of the in-store experience before you commit.
- Package testing: See how a new design performs when placed directly beside its biggest competitors. Does it grab attention? Does it communicate value?
- Price testing: Understand how different price points affect a shopper’s preference and perceived value, and how that choice impacts the rest of their cart.
- Planogram testing: Evaluate different shelf layouts to find the arrangement that maximizes visibility and drives purchase intent for your entire product line.
- Findability testing: Ensure loyal customers can still find your product after a rebrand, and that new customers can spot it in a cluttered category.
Even small missteps can have an outsized impact. A design that confuses or alienates customers can lead to noticeable drops in sales in just a few months. By testing early and often, you can fine-tune your approach, minimize risk, and set your launch up for success.
Go beyond the "what" to the "why"
Observing behavior is one thing; understanding it is another. Our tools don’t just tell you if a product was chosen; they provide the metrics to help you understand the story behind that choice. You can analyze the average time at shelf, the attention span per product, the average cart spend, and the time to cart.
These data points help you connect the dots, turning observation into actionable strategy. For the brand managers, marketers, and product leaders we work with every day, this is the key. You don’t need more data points; you need more clarity. You need the confidence to walk into a stakeholder meeting and say, "We tested three package designs in a simulated Walmart aisle, and design B was not only 40% more likely to be picked up but also resulted in a 15% higher average cart spend."
Move from asking people to imagine their behavior to simply capturing it.
Our new, academy course, "Shelf Test and Ecommerce Advanced Certification," is designed to make you an expert at this. We’ll guide you through everything from the fundamentals of package testing to advanced techniques for optimizing your online and offline shelf strategy. This isn’t about replacing your expertise; it's about putting a powerful, agile tool in your hands to make smarter, faster decisions with confidence.
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