More than half of your patients prioritize frame selection first, but a large percentage appear to care equally about the lenses they purchase. Just over half (52 percent) selected eyeglass frames before choosing lenses, according to Jobson Optical Research’s 2013 Eyewear and Eye Care Consumer Patterns Insight Survey. But some 40 percent said that their purchase decisions for frames and lenses are of equal importance.
Click HERE to purchase Jobson Optical Research’s 2013 Eyewear and Eye Care Consumer Patterns Insights survey.
This week I discovered the LensCrafter’s web site that gives patients frame suggestions. The purpose of the web site is to get patients to identify their personal style and make frame suggestions before the patient comes into the office. This potentially could decrease the time patients spend in the optical while improving the patient in-office experience.
The web site asked 12 questions, one at a time. With each question were four pictures to choose from as your answer. Here are just five of the 12 questions this engaging and intriguing web site asked me to answer.
1) Which shoes would you most likely wear?
2) Which chair could be found in your home?
3) Which shirt would you most likely wear?
4) Which dog would you bring home?
5) Which car would you like to road trip in?
These 12 fun and interactive questions resulted in four possible frame selections. I may not have considered these selections on my own. Here, pictured below, are the suggestions given to me based on my responses to the site’s questions.
Anything that speeds up patient time in the optical while simultaneously improving the patient experience is definitely valuable. Here are three questions for independent ODs that came to mind after using the LensCrafters eyewear selection tool:
1) Is it fun to pick out frames in your optical? People buy more when they are happy.
2) Does the patient know that you’ve taken the time to understand them and their lifestyle?
3) Have you automated some of the procedure to decrease the time spent in the optical? Keeping people in your office too long often ends in them rushing to leave due to time constraints.
Your assignment this week is to see if there are other lessons to be learned from this web site (e.g.: did you find the typo?). Then, after reviewing the lessons with staff, make improvements in your optical and on your web site.
