Stores use music to boost sales, this startup applies the concept to online retailers

There’s a clear, demonstrated effect of music on sales performance, with the right kind of tune helping stores significantly increase footfall and influence purchase decisions.

Research from Gensler (PDF Link) also shows that the use of music can help businesses create emotional engagement around their product and strengthen their brand. And, as almost every marketer will tell you, consumers buy experiences and products from brands they personally identify with.

With so much of the world’s commerce shifting to online channels, why not apply the same principles to internet companies? That’s the niche Israel-based righTune aims to tap into. The startup works with businesses to curate unique playlists for every visitor to the site. Selection of music is determined by the site’s branding, content, and individual visitor preference. Furthermore, righTune claims its product can help boost performance by 15 percent.

“We take the widely-accepted concept of in-store music and leverage it for the online world,” explains Erez Perlmuter, CEO of righTune. “Our music creates a subtle, ubiquitous ambience that adds a deep emotional dimension to a site’s content and directly impacts users’ behavior.”

The right kind of jazz

To understand the right composition and melody for each site, the startup works with businesses to understand the branding values it wishes to communicate and its target audience. After determining the initial playlist, righTune will further bifurcate the genre and tempo of the music according to factors such as geography, weather, and time of day.

For example, music played on a rainy Monday morning will differ from that on a Friday evening, due to variations in visitor moods. There’s extensive use of big data and machine learning to constantly tweak the algorithm and find the perfect melody.

RighTune launched in late 2014 and has already signed up over 2,000 enterprise clients, including retailers, hotels, and restaurants. It’s growing at about 10 percent month-on-month and is backed by Japanese VC Samurai Fund, claims Erez.

So how does the startup back up its claim of boosting performance by approximately 15 percent? Erez says they’re constantly tracking user behavior, engagement, and conversion on the website. On a daily basis, results are compared to a small control group, where no music is played, so that performance can be tracked. “This is a hard data, reliable statistical model,” he adds.

The startup has already been granted two patents on its technology, whilst more are pending. Its main competition is DIY solutions, which allow developers to embed radio stations and tracks into media players, but Erez says that’s not personalized to each user or situation, and cannot track improvement in user engagement.

Part of the startup’s long-term vision is to scale into offline, in-store environments as well. Erez explains there’s a lack of data for brick and mortar stores and he’s hoping to apply some of the understandings in online behavior to offline channels. Partner retailers are already given an analytics dashboard to help them analyze the impact of righTune’s product, and eventually they can use that for physical stores.

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This article by Osman Husain originally appeared on Tech in Asia, a Burn Media publishing partner.

Image by Gonzalo Baeza via Flickr.