Leverage INSITE’S Biomechanics Data & Expertise to Better Understand Your Footwear Evolutions
Brands are always looking forward to the next product, the next innovation, or ways to improve upon existing products, but how do you benchmark what’s working relative to the competition to understand the best next move for your brand?
In this post, we’ll explain how INSITE’s Proven Comfort™ method masters insole design so you can build a strong and reliable DNA for your footwear products and better understand how they are improving and evolving. When you know what updates will make the biggest impact with customers, you’re able to increase product confidence and deliver the best possible customer experience.
What is the Proven Comfort Method and How Does it Improve Insole Design?
Our Proven Comfort method is all about taking the concept of comfort and bringing it to life, so to speak. We apply an innovative testing process that produces valuable data points we can use to quantify and assess a shoe’s level of comfort with an INSITE insole.
This process includes a broad range of testing:
- Plantar Pressure Testing:
Measuring underfoot pressure, the foot’s center of pressure, and gait - Material Impact Testing:
Measuring compression forces, shock absorption, and rebound - Comfort Perception Testing:
Measuring key comfort metrics such as fit, cushioning, rebound, comfort, and more
From this testing, we uncover high-fidelity data points for all of the components that define “comfort”, which allows us to apply a data-based definition to something that is actually highly subjective.
Previously, accounting for comfort in insole design was primarily done through physical properties testing; our focus was on the material and properties like cushion, rebound, and support.
However, by infusing biomechanics testing into the insole design process, we’re able to analyze very specific aspects of comfort and tailor our analysis to your brand’s footwear design.
We look at insole shape, material, and design, and build a prototype for your footwear using our Proven Comfort process.
How Quantifying Comfort Puts Brands on a Solid Path Forward
Brands gain a new understanding of how their customers perceive comfort. Our by-the-numbers system allows brands to quantify the comfort of their footwear based on the insole design and type of footwear; for example, a bartender who’s on their feet for hours at a time has a different need for and perception of comfort than someone who is out walking their dog for 30 minutes.
Once you can quantify comfort for different types of footwear, it’s easier to benchmark your product performance and build upon it for improved customer experiences. Think of Proven Comfort as a formula you can infuse into your footwear lines so you always have a handle on how you can improve and evolve.
Here are the core benefits to brands of using the Proven Comfort process for insole design in their footwear:
- Validate comfort & performance claims:
Want to say you have the most comfortable work boot? Prove it by leveraging the only biomechanics testing process that quantifies comfort to meet your customers’ perceptions of and expectations for comfort. - Benchmark footwear performance against your competitors:
The Proven Comfort process is a comparative test that sets an acceptable standard for, and metrics around, comfort, so your brand can internally benchmark how your product is doing against a competitor product or against previous iterations of your own product. - Make impactful updates that move products forward:
Testing your footwear line against the Proven Comfort standard allows you to gain better insight and control over whether you’re actually evolving your footwear through product updates. - Leverage the latest biomechanics science:
Launch footwear that boasts performance, comfort, and support based on leading biomechanics science. - Use data to increase product confidence:
When you have proven data points from scientific testing behind your comfort claims, confidence in your footwear product launch from the brand side, as well as the consumer side, increases dramatically.
How We Prove Our Proven Comfort Process
We’re doing the scientific testing, running the numbers, and validating our data, all the while following our stringent requirements for accuracy and legitimacy.
Our tests are conducted in controlled lab settings with real-life participants, and our methods follow the guidance of our scientific advisory board, which is made up of experts in the fields of biomechanics, podiatry, pedorthics, and sports medicine.
What we’re able to deliver with our Proven Comfort process is a consumer-trusted testing approach that produces highly-accurate and reliable results. It’s truly a value-add for the brands that leverage our science.
In the end, our goal is to provide brands with more than a simple insole product. Consumers can go out and purchase an insole if they need one, but we want brands to help their customers eliminate that need by providing the requisite comfort right out of the box. Brands are able to design and develop footwear that is as comfortable as possible for customers, delivering a memorable buyer experience.
It’s not rocket science – it’s insole science. And it’ll elevate your footwear line now and for the future simply by delivering on customers’ individual perceptions of comfort.
