You have holes in your funnel to fill - here is how you can fix them
A lot of marketing attention these days is given to acquiring website traffic - organic, paid and social - and many companies and agencies have done a great job at this. But, since growing revenues and creating brand advocates are the main goals of most businesses, an equal amount of your attention should be focused on converting this traffic - convincing these visitors to take the conversion actions you want them to.
The metaphor I like best in this context is the leaky bucket. The bucket represents your sales funnel, and the holes represent visitors ‘leaking out’ before they should. The implication for your e-commerce business: you need to fill these holes, starting with the larger ones, as fast and as permanently as possible.
But how can you…
86% of consumers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience, so exactly how do you go about offering them one?
Did you know that customer experience (CX) is surpassing price and product as the major brand differentiator?
For many consumers, customer service and customer experience are seen as one in the same. However, customer service and experience differ just a bit. Service is a single touchpoint with a brand, while experience impacts all of the feelings and emotions associated with a brand.
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86% of buyers are willing to pay more for better customer experience.
It was also recently found in a study by the Temkin Group that billion dollar a year companies who…
Businesses that offer better customer experiences earn between 4% and 8% more from purchases than their competitors
Modern customers don’t just want to buy a great product or subscribe for dependable service - they also want the overall purchase experience to be enjoyable and are ready to pay more for this. No wonder, businesses that offer better experiences to their customers earn between 4% and 8% above their competitors.
According to McKinsey, 70% of buying experiences are based on how consumers feel they are being treated. Something as simple as saying ‘thank you’ to your customers after a purchase can improve their impression of your brand immensely.
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Of course, when customers feel special or cared for,…
Creating a website with the right feeling, or one that hits the right note with your target audience takes research, insight and quite a lot of practice
User experience describes how a person feels when interacting with technology. It’s a simple enough concept, but online business owners the world over so often get it wrong.
Creating a website with the right feeling, or one that hits the right note with your target audience takes research, insight and quite a lot of practice.
It means asking questions like:
'Are my users able to navigate around my site easily?'
'Can they find everything they want within a few seconds?'
'Are they being distracted by confusing design features?'
'Are they frustrated by hidden information?'
But exactly how important is user-experience and how can you ensure your website is up to scratch? In this brief blog, I’ll provide you with the answers.
How important is user experience?
Creating captivating designs…
When customers feel an emotional connection to a brand, the lifetime value of that customer can increase by 300%
There is so much more to success in business than a profitable bottom line. Unfortunately, many marketing teams and sales departments get so wrapped up in hitting goals and increasing conversion rates that they forget about the most important part of creating a great brand: the customer-business relationship.
Often, the reason that a customer comes back to buy from your business is the perception they have about your brand. If their experience was positive and they enjoyed your product, there is very little convincing needed to get them to convert once again.
This is why cultivating meaningful relationships with customers is so important. In fact, when customers feel an emotional connection to a brand, the lifetime value of that customer can increase by 300% and they are far more likely…
Chart of the day: customers expect more personalized experiences according to businesses and that's why they are prioritising improving CX
Customer Experience (CX) improvements are being led by customers wanting more personalized experiences according to new research. Customer expectations are essentially driving CX prioritisation.
7 in 10 businesses said they were improving CX because customers expect more personalization, whilst 6 in 10 simply said they want to improve customer loyalty, which makes sense, we all want loyal customers!
I think they are right though, customers expect far more personalization and many businesses are still not personalizing the experience for customers. It's great to see that businesses realise that customers have a desire for personalized experiences, but now they are expecting this and therefore it's important that businesses start to prioritize this and act fast.
You'll notice the least concern was competitors delivering a better experience,…
The EAST framework combines behavioural economics with other sciences and psychology to truly understand and influence behaviour change
Behavioural economics is nothing new in marketing, having been a fundamental industry discipline for the past few decades, but there's a new kid in town and it's behavioural economics, supercharged.
Behavioural Insights (BI) has long been a tool for Government departments to improve the design and implementation of public policy, with its umbrella spanning research into behavioural economics, sciences and psychology.
Its aim is to understand and influence behaviour change among citizens by:
Simplifying processes
Removing unnecessary steps
Making services more user-friendly
We think it translates perfectly into marketing too when improving and enhancing customer experience.
Nudge and learn – a winning approach
Much like in conversion rate optimisation (CRO), services are streamlined by testing subtle changes to the design, content, timings, and navigation of websites, letters, emails, forms and other methods of communication with citizens.
Something as simple as changing…
Mapping the customer journey more accurately using surveys
In today’s highly competitive market, where product quality is not sufficient to get ahead, customer service becomes a key part of a company’s strategy. Consequently, the organization which successfully maintains the best relationship with its customers manages the best returns in terms of income.
As a result, companies have placed a new focus on understanding their customers in order to better their service, product or image. One of the main tools they use is the customer journey map.
A customer journey map, usually represented in a graphic and visual manner, is an interpretation of the entire experience that an individual has with a company, product or brand over time.
Mapping Out the Journey
Mapping out the interactions and experiences a customer has with a certain brand or product is only half the work that a customer journey map involves. After identifying all of the stages, from the…
Customer expectations are rising fast. Meet them or die.
Today, website visitors expect more than ever before from your website as they compare your user experience against the leaders from different sectors like Amazon, Facebook, HubSpot or Uber. Yet, often there are common flaws in how websites are designed and implemented which means they don't support your communications goals and the customer journey.
While mistakes may not be fatal, if you think of every design or content mistake you make as a defect in the customer journey, that will be repeated thousands of time or more if it's not fixed, it's not going to help you compete since research shows that bad experiences mean that visitors or customers won't return.
The quality of the Customer and User Experiences that businesses deliver through their customer-facing websites is now vital in most industries. The website experience must support the whole customer lifecycle from acquiring customers…
Chart of the Day: Predictive Analytics Users Get Better Results
Predictive Analytics isn't a new marketing technique, but interest in it has increased with the hype around using Artificial Intelligence for Marketing. This typically involves using Machine Learning, a key AI technique for marketing, by analysis of historical results of campaigns to inform future targeting and creative.
In this research, analysts Aberdeen Group review the impact of Predictive analytics on different ROI metrics as presented in the chart below.
But, before we take a look at the results, what is predictive analytics? Aberdeen define predictive analytics as:
'A technology allowing firms to analyze structured and unstructured data, be it captured in the past or in real time. Such analysis reveals key trends and correlations while also predicting the likelihood of things such as customer churn'.
This is a broad definition since most marketing applications focus on analysis…
