Egan Enterprise Research
Egan Enterprise  ·  Research & Intelligence

The Evidence
Behind the Edge

Every strategy we build is grounded in decades of peer-reviewed research. Here is the science — condensed, cited, and made actionable — behind why the services we offer produce measurable results.

50ms First impression formed
14.6% SEO lead close rate
+30% AI-driven campaign ROI
94% Decisions are design-driven
Our Research Foundation

Built on Science,
Not Assumptions

Most agencies tell you what they think works. We show you what research proves works. The following studies span consumer neuroscience, artificial intelligence, organic search, personal branding, and website psychology — each one a pillar beneath the strategies we execute for our clients.

Chapter I  —  Consumer Psychology

Why Buyers Decide
the Way They Do

Decades of neuroscience and behavioral economics reveal that purchase decisions are overwhelmingly emotional, subconscious, and design-driven — not rational. These studies form the bedrock of every campaign strategy we build.

Consumer psychology research
Frontiers in Psychology, 2022 Peer-Reviewed
The Impact of Online Reviews on Purchasing Decisions
Frontiers in Psychology  ·  Decision Neuroscience

Eye-tracking study mapping exactly how consumers read product reviews. Reveals attention asymmetry — negative content draws significantly more cognitive weight than positive, and this effect is especially pronounced among female buyers. Directly connects visual behaviour to purchase intent.

More attention given to negative reviews than positive ones — visual emphasis and social proof architecture matter enormously.
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Taylor & Francis, 2024 Peer-Reviewed
Advances in Neuromarketing & Consumer Behaviour
Tandfonline  ·  Business & Management

Reviews fMRI, EEG, and eye-tracking studies to map subconscious purchase triggers. Examines why $793B in global advertising annually still produces unpredictable results — and what the neuroscience says about fixing that.

$793B Spent globally on ads in 2022 — most without neuroscientific insight.
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University of Connecticut Peer-Reviewed
Consumer Decision Making on the Web
Psychology & Marketing Journal  ·  UConn

Foundational academic framework identifying trust, navigational ease, and decision simplicity as the three core online conversion drivers. One of the most cited works in digital consumer psychology — still definitive two decades later.

3 Proven conversion drivers: trust signal, ease of navigation, simplified decision architecture.
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Chapter II  —  Artificial Intelligence

The Measurable Power
of AI in Marketing

AI is no longer speculative. These peer-reviewed studies and benchmarks quantify exactly what machine learning, predictive analytics, and automation deliver in revenue terms — across industries and company sizes.

ResearchGate, 2023 Peer-Reviewed
Predictive Analytics & AI on Digital Marketing ROI
ResearchGate  ·  Digital Strategy

Literature review across email marketing, personalisation, social media optimisation, and audience segmentation. Businesses deploying predictive AI show higher engagement and conversion across every channel studied.

+20–30% Higher campaign ROI reported by businesses using AI-driven personalisation (McKinsey cited within).
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SAGE Journals, 2024 Peer-Reviewed
Artificial Intelligence in Marketing: Two Decades Review
SAGE Journals  ·  Jain & Kumar

Systematic 20-year review of AI’s transformation of marketing practice. Covers big data, IoT, consumer behaviour shifts, and documents the acceleration of AI adoption across every marketing discipline from 2004 to 2024.

20 yrs Of longitudinal data confirming AI’s sustained competitive advantage in marketing outcomes.
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Influencer Marketing Hub, 2025 Industry Data
AI Marketing Benchmark Report 2025
Influencer Marketing Hub  ·  1,290 Marketers Surveyed

Large-scale practitioner survey. Adoption is accelerating dramatically — and those using AI are pulling decisively ahead of those who are not, both in output volume and campaign performance metrics.

69.1% Of marketers now use AI tools. 70.6% believe AI outperforms humans on key tasks.
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Chapter III  —  Social Media & Personal Branding

What Successful Brands
Have in Common

Across industries and platforms, the research consistently identifies the same cluster of attributes that separate personal brands that convert from those that merely exist. Here is what the data says.

MDPI, 2025 Peer-Reviewed
A Framework for Personal Brand Equity
MDPI Business & Management  ·  396 Participants

Mixed-methods study combining in-depth interviews and a large-scale survey. Identifies the six critical attributes that determine whether a personal brand actually carries equity — or simply occupies digital space.

6 Proven equity drivers: visibility, credibility, differentiation, online presence, professional network, reputation.
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Emerald Publishing, 2025 Peer-Reviewed
Social Media Marketing and Brand Loyalty
Spanish Journal of Marketing  ·  402 Responses, SEM

Structural equation modelling on 402 consumer responses. Demonstrates the quantified pathway from social media activity to brand loyalty — through the intermediary stages of brand trust and brand equity. A rigorous model, not anecdote.

Strong + Social media activity → brand equity → brand trust → loyalty. All pathways statistically significant.
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Springer, 2024 Peer-Reviewed
Leaders’ Personal Branding on Professional Social Media
Journal of Brand Management  ·  Springer

Studies the why and how of leadership personal branding on LinkedIn. Connects individual brand development to measurable organisational outcomes — showing that the founder’s personal brand directly impacts the company’s perceived value.

Linked Founder personal brand strength directly and measurably influences company credibility and deal flow.
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SAGE Journals, 2023 Peer-Reviewed
Owned Social Media: Meta-Analysis on Engagement & Sales
Journal of Marketing  ·  Multi-industry Meta-Analysis

Large-scale meta-analysis covering multiple industries and countries. Provides empirical generalisations on what owned social media actually produces in engagement and sales — going beyond anecdote to cross-industry evidence.

Multi Consistent engagement and revenue uplift from owned social media replicated across industries and geographies.
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Chapter IV  —  Website Psychology

Why Your Website Is
Your Most Critical Asset

The research on website credibility and design impact is unambiguous. Users judge, decide, and convert — or leave — in ways that most businesses never account for. These studies quantify exactly what is at stake.

Lindgaard et al., 2006 Peer-Reviewed
Attention Web Designers: First Impressions in 50ms
Behaviour & Information Technology  ·  Carleton University

The landmark study that changed web design permanently. Eye-tracking experiments confirmed that users form a complete aesthetic impression — that then biases all subsequent interaction — in a window most designers never considered possible.

50ms Time to form a first impression. That impression determines whether they stay or leave.
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Stanford Web Credibility Project Institutional Research
Website Design as the Primary Credibility Signal
Stanford University  ·  Persuasive Technology Lab

The foundational Stanford study. Across thousands of participants, website design emerged as the single most influential factor in judgements of company credibility — above content, above reputation, above price. Design is not decorative. It is functional trust.

94% Of first impressions are design-related. 75% judge company credibility from website design alone.
Stanford Research
Nielsen / Google / HubSpot synthesis Industry Data
Website Speed, UX & Conversion: The Direct Relationship
OWDT  ·  Nielsen, Adobe, Google, HubSpot Research

Synthesis of the most robust platform-level data on the relationship between website performance, visual hierarchy, and conversion rate. Each variable studied — load speed, mobile experience, CTA placement — has a quantified effect on revenue.

-7% Conversion loss for every 1-second delay in page load. Speed is a revenue variable, not a technical one.
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Chapter V  —  SEO & Organic Growth

The Long Game That
Always Pays Out

SEO is the only marketing channel that compounds over time without an ongoing cost per impression. The following studies quantify what that compounding produces — and why businesses that ignore it consistently underperform those that do not.

IJCRES, 2024 Peer-Reviewed
SEO vs SEM: A Comparative Study on Long-Term ROI
IJCRES  ·  Double-Blind Peer-Reviewed

Rigorously compares long-term ROI of organic SEO against paid SEM across four industries: e-commerce, healthcare, finance, and technology. The conclusion is consistent regardless of industry — organic search wins on sustained return over a multi-year horizon.

SEO > SEM Across all four industries studied, organic SEO produces higher multi-year ROI than paid search advertising.
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SeoProfy, 2025 Industry Data
SEO ROI Statistics: By Industry & Channel
SeoProfy  ·  2025–2026 Benchmark Report

Comprehensive benchmark report covering SEO ROI across industries. Real estate and financial services lead in returns, but every sector studied outperforms outbound sales on a per-lead cost basis by a significant margin.

14.6% SEO lead close rate vs 1.7% for outbound. Real estate SEO ROI: 1,389%. Finance: 1,031%.
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Backlinko / Ahrefs Platform Data
Google SERP Click Distribution: Where the Clicks Go
Search Atlas  ·  Backlinko / Ahrefs Dataset

Analysis of billions of Google searches mapping exactly how clicks distribute across rank positions. The data makes the stakes of ranking clear: the difference between position 1 and position 11 is not a modest uplift — it is the difference between visibility and irrelevance.

0.63% Of users ever click to page 2. The top 3 results capture 54.4% of all clicks. Position 1 alone: 27.6%.
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Conductor, 2024 Industry Data
Organic Search Benchmarks Across 7 Industries
Conductor  ·  800+ Domain Analysis, 2024

Analysis of 800+ domains across seven industries measuring organic traffic performance over time. The key finding: organic is the only channel that produces reliable compounding traffic — content that ranks continues to drive visitors years after it is published, at zero ongoing cost per visit.

Per visit from a ranked page, indefinitely. No other marketing channel has this compounding cost structure.
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The Research Is Clear.
The Question Is Execution.

Every one of these studies points to the same conclusion — the gap between businesses that grow and businesses that stagnate is not luck, budget, or timing. It is strategy, execution, and consistency. That is what we do.