What Not to Do on the Homepage: UX Advice for Fashion Retail 

The homepage is often a key webpage for direct and organic search channels for players in the retail fashion industry. In addition to being a crucial step in the browsing process for users, it’s also an opportunity for businesses to introduce and showcase their brand identity through editorials and fashion trends.

However, according to the data we collected in Q1 of 2019, fashion retail homepage bounce rates were as high as 40% across all devices. Users also still spend an average session time of 7min on desktop and 3min 41s on mobile. (Remember, Contentsquare measures bounce rate as having only seen the single page and leaving the site). 

It can be difficult to know what kinds of design iterations will help prevent users from exiting without having viewed at least a few product pages. It’s also impossible to create the perfect homepage, but we have some great tips to follow if you’re looking to improve the design of your fashion eCommerce homepage. 

Don’t place text on cluttered areas of images

Although images and photography are crucial for communicating brand identity and editorial content, make sure you choose images that are text-friendly. Place text over emptier areas of the image, change the image, or place text on an overlay. Always use white text unless brand guidelines say otherwise. Users tend to skip over text that is too long, too small, or just difficult to read. Keep in mind: any information must be easy to digest at a fast pace, especially for mobile users.

Don’t make the hero image the full length of the page

If you’re showcasing your Fall/Winter looks, consider using a static banner —a prominent, single banner on the page that does not have rotating content, one that allows other content to be seen above the fold. We often find the exposure rate — how far down the page visitors scroll — drops drastically below the fold line. 

A hero image that spans the full length of the page could mislead users into thinking there is no other content. Because the average length of mobile pages is around 3,400px, we need to encourage users as much as possible to scroll past the fold line.

Don’t automate carousels

If you’re showcasing new collections or promoting sitewide discounts, avoid automatically rotating slides within the carousel. Instead, use static carousels that do not include more than three slides to allow users an opportunity to digest both the image and information in each slide. Users should be able to use arrows to easily move from one slide to another. 

Although there is a big debate in the design world over whether carousels are effective, we see much less exposure and engagement on the second and third slides. Automating carousels can rob users of control over the experience and as a result, they are more likely to ignore it if the slide moves too quickly for them to read.

Don’t hide primary CTAs or category links below the fold

Instead, make sure they are clearly above the fold line; try placing them on an uncluttered area of the image. You want to encourage users to immediately begin browsing, whether it leads them to a category page or list page for product catalogs that are currently being prioritized. 

Try placing a horizontal category slider at the top of the page and evaluate whether that improves your users’ browsing process. 

 

 

Showcase editorial content that is space-conscious and easy to interact with

Make sure that any editorial images on the homepage lead the users to specific categories, seasonal collections, or product pages. Giving them a purpose beyond aesthetics encourages users to explore beyond just the homepage and can help increase session time.

Here is a great example from Ralph Lauren:

 

 

The above image on the left showcases the bag as both aesthetic and functional, enticing users with beautiful photography, while leading them to the product page. The text is succinct, easy-to-read, and placed on an uncluttered area of the image. 

The carousel placed on the right provides even more options for the user to view additional products for the upcoming season. Both the image and carousel do not extend past the screen, making it easy to view. Part of the content of the next section is viewable, avoiding the false bottom and encouraging users to scroll further.

Making design iterations to your site never ends. As user behaviors continue to evolve faster than ever, it’s important to continuously evaluate and reassess the performance of individual elements on your pages. It’s important to make design changes based on the needs of your user base, not the general users of the industry. 

Don’t forget to regularly check on other players in your industry for inspiration, as there is much to learn from the digital experiences and websites you enjoy. But remember, just because a competitor does it, doesn’t mean they are improving the experience of their users. So be inspired, yes, but consult your own customer data before implementing changes.

 

Hero Image Via: Rawpixel.com, Adobe Stock

Summer Marketing Campaigns: What 18.6 Million Visitor Sessions Reveal About Summer Sales

With summer drawing to a close, we thought it would be a good time to review one of the season’s most popular digital objectives: summer sales. Never ones to miss out on a data opportunity, we surveyed millions of digital visitor sessions to understand exactly how consumers interact with summer promotions, and how these campaigns are impacting revenue for brands.

In this article, we’ll share what online summer shopping reveals about desktop and mobile use, as well as the difference in digital behavior between buyers and nonbuyers. Relying on unique behavioral and revenue attribution metrics to understand how shoppers consume digital content, we’ll be sharing key insights into the customer journeys of summer bargain hunters.

Summer Sales in the Digital Experience Defined

A summer sale — in the context of digital experience — is defined as a marketing campaign centered on promotions and deals that explicitly mention the season. It often manifests in banners or carousels, with call-outs that feature discounts, naturally ones that allude to the summer. 

In this way, summer marketing campaigns are more broadly encompassing; they don’t refer to just a single holiday such as the Fourth of July and as such, can exist longer than a typical, holiday-focused sale. 

In terms of UX and website design, summer sales take precedence in a designated section of a page, such as a menu, slideshow, or the aforementioned banners.

Methodology

For the purpose of this article, we analyzed customer interactions across 8 websites, in four retail sub-sectors: apparel, accessories, beauty and jewelry. We included all visitor sessions on these sites for the month of July (July 1st – 31st).

Our survey on summer sales drew data from 18.6 million user sessions with a total of 122.4 million pages collected. From this wide set of data, we were able to glean a twofold macro comparison: that of typical behavior on desktop vs. mobile and tablet, and that of buyers vs nonbuyers during the summer sales period we studied in the US. 

Let’s learn how summer sales in 2019 performed in the ecommerce retail industry, in addition to how visitors interacted with summer sales content.


Device Performance for Summer Sales in 2019: Desktop Vs Mobile Vs Tablet

Conversions:

Meanwhile, the average cart on tablet is extraordinarily close to that of desktop, at $106.68. This average is inversely related to summer sales traffic by device, since mobile reaps the highest traffic: 68.01% of sessions, representing a whopping 12.65 million sessions. This number dwarfs tablet sessions, which garner only 5.72% of traffic. Desktop traffic came squarely in between at 26.15%.

Bounce Rates:

Much in keeping with our mobile report, mobile also bore the highest share of bounces, which averaged in at 41% — 6% higher than the desktop rate of 35%. The bounce rate on tablet was in between at 38%.

Time Per Session, Number of Pageviews & Time Spent on Site:

With an average session time of 8 minutes 9 seconds and 6.9 pageviews per session, the data shows that the bulk of summer sale browsing occurs on desktop. Mobile had the lowest stats on both accounts, with an average session time of 4 minutes 8 seconds, across 5.4 pageviews.

Despite mobile visitors seemingly unwilling to linger too long on a site, this audience still rakes in the highest sales volume with 257,000 sales, vs 222,608 for desktop. Nonetheless, desktop revenue remained the highest at $24.8 million.

So what does this tell us? That the gap between user expectations and user experience on mobile prevails, as desktop reigns supreme, with its lowest bounce rates and highest conversions. But with mobile traffic beating out all device types, mobile still presents a tremendous revenue opportunity.

Summer Sales 2019: Zooming In On The Homepage

The first thing we noticed when analyzing homepage interactions was that all summer sale shoppers click mostly on the menu to get to the products (28.10% click rate). The Sale tab on the menu drives only 2.88% of clicks versus 4.91% on the sale banner. It appears that when looking for a shortcut to a summer deal, shoppers will sooner click the banner than the Sale section on the navigation bar.

Although it has a fairly low click rate compared to the rest of the menu, the Sale tab on the menu boasts a healthy Conversion Rate per Click — 11.46% versus 6.35% for the menu — implying that those who do click on it are determined to convert. 

However, the Sale tab was defeated by the sales banners, which generate the highest conversion rate per click at 12.09%.

The high hesitation time on the banner (1.41% versus 0.92% for the Sale tab on the menu) points to a need for optimization; perhaps the wording isn’t clear, or visitors are not sure where or what to click.

Summer Sales: Comparing The Behavior of Buyers And Nonbuyers

Buyer Vs Nonbuyers: Time on Page

We found that shoppers who ended up making a purchase spent almost twice as long browsing as those who didn’t buy anything (28 minutes versus 15 minutes). Buyers also consume many more pages than nonbuyers: 28 vs only 6 by nonbuyers. 

Once they’re on the page, however, they essentially dedicate the same amount of attention to it — 58 seconds for buyers vs 53 seconds for those who don’t complete a purchase. These two audiences also appear to scroll in a similar fashion, with a 59% scroll rate for buyers and 57% for nonbuyers.

Visitors who made purchases consistently exhibited the highest number of pageviews across a wide scope of pages, including category, product and checkout. They viewed three times as many product pages on average than nonbuyers, and more than twice the number of category pages. 

Buyers Vs Nonbuyers: Interaction, Interest & Hesitation 

Overall, buyers were more likely to interact with the search bar than those who stuck to window-shopping, with 26% more clicks on this element. Much like other consumers, shoppers who end up making a purchase tended to access their summer bargains via banners instead of the Sale tab on the menu — 6.20% versus 2.90%. 

To maximize sales, make sure the search bar is prominent — making it sticky assures its viability no matter how far users scroll — and offer the best deals on your banners to take advantage of this interest.

Nonbuyers manifested a larger degree of interest for the homepage menu, with an almost 10% higher click rate than buyers. Nonbuyers were about as likely to click on the Sale tab as buyers (that is to say, not that much), but nonbuyers exhibit a much lower float time on this element, suggesting they are just as keen to score a bargain.

Their higher menu engagement and low hesitation time imply that non-buying visitors are interested in products, but may not have found exactly what they were looking for. Therein lies the need to optimize your homepage elements for this group, particularly the menu; distinct items that are hard to categorize should have their own menu category, or at least exist as a sub-category. 

Nonbuyers have a considerably higher average time before first click on the Sales banner, search bar, Sale tab and menu elements, showing that they ingest content much longer before clicking on it. 

Their hesitation also points to a more cautious attitude. Buyers arrive at summer sales elements with the intent to buy, while nonbuyers are far more careful, which inhibits them from buying. Thus, it is best to accentuate the savings aspect of your sales, sometimes across each item to lure in nonbuyers. Perhaps they won’t convert the first time around, but this will bring them back.

Tips to Optimize Your Summer Sales Campaigns

Understanding how visitor segments interact with promotional elements such as banners and the Sale tab on your menu is the first step to understanding how these areas of your site may fall short of user expectations. Optimizing the experience based on the unique behavior trends associated with various device and segments will ensure you make the most of the season’s revenue potential.

One of the first things you should do is look into what’s causing high bounce rates on mobile. This can be due to your touch areas being too small and other easy design fixes that can put an end to user frustration and therefore, exits. 

There could also be a variety of internal issues on your mobile site or app hindering your UX  and we provide 3 areas of improvement to optimize the mobile UX. Tablet users may also face the same issues that mobile users confront and can therefore rely on similar optimization tactics.

Whether they end up clicking the Purchase button or not, visitors tend to be more attracted to promotional banners than to the Sale tab on your navigation bar, so it is important to concert your tactics on optimizing this region. Take advantage of the higher engagement on the banner by highlighting products through images and text call-outs and maximize interactions by making the entire area clickable. 

Given that the menu receives the highest click rate among buyers and nonbuyers, you should focus your UX efforts on this element as well. Capitalize on it by including all the necessary categories possible on desktop, but keep it simpler on mobile. Make sure it includes a Sale tab for visitors who want a shortcut to discounted products. 

Contentsquare Helps Brands Grow Revenue and Loyalty Through Exclusive Behavioral Insights Powered by Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Integration with Salesforce B2C Commerce Gives Teams Access to Unique Customer Conversion and Content ROI Metrics Within Their Commerce Dashboard

NEW YORKJune 5, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Contentsquare, a leading digital experience optimization platform trusted by brands like Avon, Kenzo, Sephora, and GoPro, is making its actionable customer behavior insights available to brands through the Salesforce LINK Partner Marketplace.

Fueled by intelligence, Contentsquare goes beyond traditional KPIs to give brands a granular understanding of the performance of their web, mobile site and app — down to which in-page elements are encouraging visitor engagement and which are stalling conversions. When paired with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Contentsquare’s exclusive engagement and revenue metrics (Content Attractiveness, Revenue per Click, Hesitation Time, etc), Salesforce B2C Commerce clients can quickly see how to streamline their product search process, tailor customer journeys, and enhance content for conversions.

GoPro Story

Global lifestyle brand GoPro uses Contentsquare on a daily basis as its “source of truth” for understanding customer behavior and delivering inspirational experiences to its community of content-hungry fans.

“I have never been more stoked to see a technology solution like this one that makes it easy for businesses like mine to scale quickly and achieve our aggressive goals,” said Kathy Ando, Senior Director of eCommerce, GoPro. “GoPro.com is stronger, smarter, and more prepared to take on massive digital transformation through Contentsquare and Salesforce B2C Commerce. Our Conversion rate has never been this strong, thanks to the actionable insights from Contentsquare and the flexibility SCC affords us. Contentsquare has armed GoPro with the fuel to propel our velocity and Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud is our launching pad.”

Enriched eCommerce

The Contentsquare integration available through the Salesforce LINK Partner Marketplace provides brands like GoPro an enriched eCommerce management experience. Brands no longer have to toggle between systems to understand visitor behavior in order to troubleshoot issues or zero in on best practices. Valuable input from our common customers will continue to shape our integration roadmap throughout 2019.

Empower the Entire Commerce Team

With Contentsquare’s full capabilities at their fingertips — including the CS Live browser extension, which displays KPIs directly onto the brand’s Salesforce B2C Commerce site — the entire eCommerce team can leverage highly visual data to quickly prioritize the UX actions that provide the biggest improvements and identify previously unseen opportunities for growth.

“This integration is the natural next step in our mission to democratize access to insight and empower all experience-builders with access to a deep, straightforward understanding of why customers behave the way they do on their sites and apps,” said Jonathan Cherki, CEO and Founder, Contentsquare. “Consumers today want integrated experiences and so do the teams that are working every day to raise digital standards. We are proud that our experience insights solution is available globally on the Salesforce LINK Partner Marketplace.”

Contentsquare experts and members of the GoPro team will be available at Salesforce Connections 2019, the customer engagement event of the year. The ContentSquare integration for Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud is currently available on the Commerce Cloud Marketplace.

Salesforce, LINK Partner Marketplace and others are trademarks of Salesforce.com, Inc.

Why Our Turnkey Salesforce B2C Commerce Integration Is A Game Changer For E-Commerce Experience Makers Everywhere

Today we give our clients the ability to quiz their digital properties about customer engagement and turn these answers into visual UX cues that can be leveraged by anyone on the digital team. The natural next step in democratizing data for all digital experience makers is to make our specialized metrics available where they can have greater reach and more impact — right in a team’s eCommerce dashboard.

That’s why we’re thrilled to be joining forces with the world-class Salesforce B2C Commerce platform, and giving brands a shortcut to our solution through the Salesforce LINK Partner Marketplace. Now, teams using Salesforce B2C Commerce can directly access our exclusive KPIs to understand the fastest ways to increase conversion, revenue and overall digital happiness.

By adding Contentsquare to your Salesforce B2C Commerce, you can understand what’s driving your conversion numbers, run meaningful A/B tests, measure the ROI of creative content, and make the most of your acquisition spend. And you can do this across your entire ecommerce team, day in and day out.

Insights For All (Or, No More Optimizing In The Dark)

A doctor wouldn’t prescribe drugs without knowing what was wrong with their patient. And you wouldn’t dream of putting on makeup in the dark. So why do so many UX improvements still stem from something as error-prone as instinct? Or from click data that assumes all customers have the same intent, needs, and goals across all web sites? Or from an analysis not readily accessible to those making the decisions?

Customers are telling you what they expect from your specific brand’s site or app experience with every click, scroll, or hover. Our solution captures all these interactions and translates them to a language anyone can understand. This means you don’t need to rely on analysts to crunch the numbers for you — from eMerchandising to art direction, everyone can access the same clear insights into which actions need to be prioritized.

Our integration with Salesforce creates a shortcut to these insights inside your eCommerce platform. No need to see experience-building and experience-improving as two separate things — now your team can improve continuously inside one system, and reduce speed to optimization.

Because our one-click insights come in a format that is digestible and makes sense to everyone, your team can quickly agree on priorities and be confident in their impact. By understanding what your specific customers want from your brand, your team can create a unique brand experience that is relevant to customers and rewarding to your bottom line.  

Digital Happiness: There’s A New E-Commerce KPI On The Block

Many psychologists will tell you that being understood is even more valued than being loved. And value is exactly what brands are expected to bring to the table today. Knowing where your customers exit and whether or not they convert is interesting. But knowing why they left and why the journey didn’t end in a purchase is actionable.

That’s why we analyze all mouse movements, including Hovers and Scrolls, and why we’ve developed unique metrics such as Attractiveness and Conversions Per Click; we take into account how consumers engage with all your content to give you a richer understanding than a simple page exit rate ever can. When you consider that over 50% of content never gets viewed, you realize the depth of the gulf you have to cross to establish an emotional brand preference that results in sales, margin and loyalty.

The digital trailblazers at GoPro have already been leveraging the power of our next-gen analytics with Salesforce B2C Commerce with great success — with results such as an 80% increase in conversions.

With storytelling such a huge part of GoPro’s offering and of the GoPro.com experience, the brand has a vital need to tell a rich digital story while encouraging direct-to-consumer conversions. For everyone’s favorite lifestyle brand, that meant enriching the experience with bold, brand-relevant content in a way that also positively impacted the ultimate sales.

Supercharge Your eCommerce With Turnkey Integration

Right now there are more than 350 brands who regularly rely on Contentsquare insights as a part of their workflow. Today you too can access this level of customer understanding in Salesforce B2C Commerce in a few clicks. We look forward to welcoming you into our community.

 

Are Mother’s Day Campaigns Worth It? What 53 Million Sessions Reveal About Digital Gifting For Moms

Mother’s Day is right around the corner (May 12th, 2019) and many brands are making the most of the gift-giving occasion, giving special campaigns pride of place on their homepage and across their website.

But how do Mother’s Day campaigns impact conversions? Are visitors clicking on these special promotions? In short, is producing all this Mother’s Day-related content really worth it?

We analyzed 53 million visitor sessions on fashion, luxury, beauty, technology and jewelry sites to see how digital consumers browse for gifts during the Mother’s Day shopping season.

We paid particular consideration to elements like homepage carousels and category pages to paint a clear picture of how Mother’s Day campaigns contribute to traffic, conversions and other KPIs.

Mother’s Day Campaigns Defined

What exactly constitutes a Mother’s Day campaign? We’re glad you asked. For the purpose of our research, it is defined as a specific site element (think slideshows, sliders, etc.) or landing pages that highlight Mother’s Day and lead visitors to a product list page with specialized gifts for the holiday.

Here are 4 findings we’ve culled from our arsenal of original data in the retail space during the Mother’s Day shopping season.

An example of a Mother’s Day campaign from Avon, wherein clicking on the slideshow leads visitors to a product list page.

Websites with Mother’s Day Campaigns Convert Better

Conversions. The raison dêtre of any brand, digital or otherwise. Our data shows that brands that implement Mother’s Day campaigns yield higher conversion rates and generate more revenue than brands that don’t.

In the lead-up to the special day, brands advertising Mother’s Day gifts saw a 211% boost to conversions. This increase in sales also hiked up the revenue for these brands by 22%. Meanwhile, the average visitor shopping cart was 1.28% higher for those browsing sites that made a special effort for Mother’s Day.

So far, so good. So how do you get visitors to consume and act on all this specially-created content?

Mother’s Day Campaign Carousel: Higher Click Rates, Lower Conversions Per Click

We looked at how visitors were interacting with homepage carousels to see whether giving this prime website real estate a Mother’s Day makeover was a winning strategy for brands. With a 3.02% click rate, Mother’s Day banner images drive higher interaction than other carousel images at a 1.94% click rate — that’s 54.87% more clicks for Mother’s Day content.

While Mother’s Day carousel images may reel in interest and curiosity among site visitors, they do not always drive more sales. With a 10.4% conversion rate per click, non-Mother’s Day banner images have a bigger impact on conversions than Mother’s Day banners, which carry an 8.3% conversion rate per click.

So with visitors clicking on Mother’s Day carousels, but not necessarily converting, what kind of data do you need to look at next?

Mother’s Day Product Category Pages Get Less Traffic But Driver Higher Carts

Next, we peered at the pages where conversions occur: product list pages. A comparison of Mother’s Day product list pages with regular category pages reveals that consumers are more likely to reach the latter. Regular product list pages get 7 times the traffic of Mother’s Day product list pages on desktop and 10 times the traffic on mobile.

But while Mother’s Day list pages may get fewer views, visitors who browse these pages have deeper pockets than regular shoppers, resulting in higher than average carts for these pages.  Average carts for shoppers who reached the Mother’s Day category page on desktop were 84.28% higher than those who didn’t, while average carts on mobile increased by 63.82%.

Additionally, higher carts have reached higher conversions — on mobile at least. Mobile visitors who reach the Mother’s Day product list pages are 4.2% more likely to convert than those who reach the regular category pages. However, desktop conversions on other list pages beat out Mother’s Day list page conversions by over 20%.

Gift recommendations and products in packages generally make for a good strategy to increase average cart increases for Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day Campaigns Have Higher Page Attractiveness

Overall, visitors displayed higher engagement with Mother’s Day content than with non-holiday content, and were more likely to click, hover and scroll on these pages. The scroll rate alone was 6% higher on mobile and 4% higher on desktop.

In fact, the overall activity rate for Mother’s Day category pages was 12% higher than on regular category pages, showing that inspirational content does have the ability to captivate visitors’ attention.

The only KPI these pages did not outperform their non-holiday counterparts on was the average time spent on page on desktop, with visitors spending 6% less time on them. Mobile visitors, however, were willing to spend 9% more time browsing gifts for their mothers than other items.

Pro Tip: Make The Most of Higher-Than-Average Carts With Gift Sets

According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), the world’s leading retail association, which hosted its Big Show in 2019 that Contentsquare took part in, US customers are predicted to spend $25 billion on Mother’s Day in 2019. In short, Mother’s Day campaigns are not to be missed.

Per our research, brands featuring dedicated Mother’s Day campaigns fared better than those without them in several regards: increasing conversions, driving more revenue and recording higher-than-average carts. Revenue alone was 1.95% higher in April for sites with Mother’s Day promotions, presenting a retail opportunity to uplift conversions through new campaigns.

An increase in scroll and activity rates shows that consumers are willing to engage with Mother’s Day campaigns, and brands should see the holiday as an opportunity to highlight unknown products and push inspirational content.

Mother’s Day shoppers have twice the average cart of those browsing regular category pages and are clearly willing to spend money on their moms. This audience will gladly splurge on a gift set so make sure you have those options available.

How To Satisfy Modern Online Shoppers’ Needs Without Losing Your Mind

Customers are demanding. Like that Queen song goes: “I want it all, and I want it now.”

Modern shoppers, especially Millennial and Gen Z, have set the stage for today’s shopping because they’re the largest demographics for most sales and are seeing gains in their income. While their needs originally were different than older consumers, their demands have become standard requests even for Boomers.

Chief among the current trends that the modern shopper wants are a social media presence, a smart web design, quality goods, quick shipping, sticking to your promises, and making the whole purchase process simpler.

These are a lot of needs to meet, but your eCommerce store can definitely do it when you take direct, deliberate steps. Let’s explore some of those steps you can start taking right now.

Social Media Activity

You’ve long heard your marketing team tell you to get on Twitter or other social media platforms. You might have heard about the surveys saying social media can generate sales and increases engagement. There are a lot of smart reasons to join social.

What we want to focus on right now is how to act on social in order to make a strong connection with your customers. At the heart of it, it all comes down to transparency. Customers want you to be open and honest, and to use social to do that.

Transparency matters more than ever. Millennials rank social as the top channel for you to be transparent and say that on social they want honesty from you more than they want it from politicians.

Here are the things they believe matter most:

Those are an amazing guide for your social activity and ads. Focus on customer service and responding to questions above all else. When things go wrong, follow the proven practice of admitting it and then fixing it. Ads can contain pricing as well as language on your manufacturing processes when applicable, which can also help engender trust with the customer.

Customers expect you to be more transparent, and some 58% believe it is a moral obligation for you to be honest.

Smart Web Design

Why does almost every article on modern web design focus on minimalism in some form? Because we’re all overloaded from the 20,000 different things vying for our attention. When you’re nothing but noise, people will head for the hills. Millennials are the worst at this with 41% struggling with information overload, while only 31% of Boomers say this.

So, how do you design in a way that promotes sales for your products while also not causing migraines? Start with the smartphone. Design for this real estate and you’ll naturally slim down and focus on what’s important. Mobile-first is a terrific way to ensure that you’re minimalist too.

Next, move to what we were just talking about: transparency around your brand.

For web design, transparency and honesty aren’t about showing the underwork but more about telling your story. Humans have been telling stories since time immemorial; it’s how we connect with each other.

Tell your story clearly and consistently on every page. For example, you’re not a clothing retailer; you help people find their style to feel good about themselves and express their individuality.

Once you have that theme, focus on the elements that relate to the customer and your interactions. The theme should be reflected in the photos you choose, the colors and font on your site, the extra information you provide, and the transparency you give around size charts, shipping costs, and more.

 

 

Skip out on the stock images and crowded ads or pop-ups. Clear away the clutter to get to a clean visual that’s visually appealing and shares your story while providing customers the details they need to make a decision.

The final piece of the puzzle is two types of recommendations: products and people. Follow Amazon’s example of showing products that are similar or ones that people who viewed product A also purchased. Second, bring in your social posts from followers and customer review to lend authenticity to the claims you make about the products.

You want to show people how these goods achieve that theme above, and then provide examples of real people who say that too.

Quality Products

It’s not surprising that people want quality products. No customers want to get ripped off, so every business focuses on some level of quality. Your business needs to define that quality level and then stick to it. Customers are more loyal when product quality stays consistent over time. You don’t have to be Apple, but you do need to meet the initial expectations that your customers expect.

One note here is that money is tight for many of your customers, though overall wages in the U.S. are starting to rise. So, you might be competing to get users from your competitors as people move away from their preferred brands.

Quality in the Millennial and Gen Z focus also means a product worth sharing. Make it something they enjoy using or wearing and would be willing to put on social media. Achieving that means you get great word-of-mouth marketing, a chance at influencer tactics, and plenty of quality reviews to add to your site.

Rapid Shipping

Shipping is a major pain point for many etailers, since your customers demand it to happen quickly and they don’t really care about logistics variables that may be beyond your control. As of 2019, Amazon Prime has roughly 100 million subscribers. They spent more than $1,500 on Amazon each year, and the shipping is a major point of interest for them.

A recent study also notes that twice as many customers took advantage of same-day shipping options in 2018 compared to 2017. And the kicker: 99% of U.S. consumers believe “fast delivery” is important.

That means you need to provide this yourself or work with an order fulfillment company that promises these delivery speeds, and you should make these promises clear. You could easily lose a sale by having slow shipping options or overly unaffordable prices.

Also, in the shipping column is the ability to track a purchase. People are willing to pay for faster shipping, so they want to know if you’re delivering on your end. About half of online shoppers in the U.S. have canceled an online order because the delivery was too slow.

A Simple Purchase Process

Along the same lines of the shipping being high-quality, customers want the purchase experience to be that way too. They don’t want huge forms or complex options, hidden costs, or even to be forced into creating an account when they’re not interested.

If someone wants to buy as a “guest,” you might lose their dollars if you don’t allow that option.

Simple shopping includes a clean and clear cart that is transparent around product costs, added fees for shipping or taxes, and shipping times. Keep this visible at all times to build more trust.

Unfortunately, most eCommerce customers in any demographic will consider or completely abandon a shopping cart at some point this year. What you can do to fight against this is to use retargeting advertising mechanisms. Cart abandonment is also the reason for one of the 17 must-send emails for your company.

Nearly 70% of carts are abandoned but sending that email can get people to come back, especially if you offer something like free shipping.

What’s important for that retargeting is it will only be successful if the purchase process they return to is simple and effective.

Corporate Promises

One of the biggest tactics for reaching Gen Z is to publish and perform corporate responsibility.

This demographic, as well as Millennials, wants a company to be authentic and share their altruistic beliefs. You need to genuinely believe in something and promote it. Do this, and you can grow your bottom line.

Corporate social responsibility, or CSR, puts a human face on any brand. It allows customers to see that you care about a cause and are actively putting money toward it. They then get the benefit of saying the products they use also do good in the world — you’re giving them bragging rights too. Lego provides a great example of this.

 

 

Another important aspect of this is the media environment that Gen Z is immersed within has a confusing mix of real and false stories of all kinds. We’re not just talking about traditional media, but also memes that accuse brands of false harm, bullying, planetary harm, and much more.

Bring in the transparency and honesty mentioned above to your work in the local community, and you can invite a new line of customers in regularly.

Onesixtyfourth has created an interesting five-step Brand Citizenship model that discusses CSR in a broader sense, noting that today’s customers want to buy from you if you improve their lives, community, and the world while taking responsibility for what you do.

Treat Them Like People, Not Buyers

The heart of every item above is treating the customer like a person. Follow the rules of a first date when you want a second one: be honest, interesting, and highlight areas where you both care about the same thing.

You don’t have to always be selling, but you do need to always be interacting.  

Optimizing Mobile Experiences: Interview With Bobby Chucas of Babylon Health

Summary

With over 2.5 million users, Babylon utilizes 21-century tech and a robust mobile strategy to fulfill their mission: to place an accessible and affordable health service in the hands of every person on the planet. From tackling challenges of form completion to designing a purposeful and compelling mobile platform, Babylon draws on behavioural insights to create a seamless experience. We sat down with Bobby Chucas, Senior Product Manager, to uncover how to optimise for a mobile-first world.

Intro

At the heart of every great mobile experience is a team that understands its users’ needs. Since 2013, Babylon has worked with partners like the English National Health Service, Samsung, and Tencent to revolutionize the GP experience. Named one of Europe’s hottest startups by Wired in 2016 and the Mobile App of the Year at the UK IT Industry Awards 2015, Babylon takes the mobile approach to democratizing healthcare.

A pioneer in health informatics, Babylon uses artificial intelligence to place accessible healthcare in the palm of your hand. However, it’s Babylon’s robust mobile strategy that places the user at the center of attention. From tackling challenges of form completion to designing a purposeful and compelling mobile platform, Babylon draws behavioral insights from its 2.5 million user base to create a seamless experience.

We sat down with Bobby Chucas, Senior Product Manager, to uncover how to optimise for a mobile-first world.

What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to optimizing your mobile experience?

You’d think mobile experience would be an easy thing to get right, given how much less space you’ve got to work with! However, mobile’s more complicated than being just about screen size, and is as much about understanding your users’ context and intent – given that mobile users could be literally anywhere when interacting with you – when they’re interacting with your product as it is about design. The biggest challenge we have is that what we’re offering requires focus and time: my product is a free, quick health assessment available through an app that gives you a detailed view of your risks of high profile diseases. This assessment is up to 15 minutes long, and many of the questions are quite specific, ranging from family history of certain diseases through to questions around sexual health and drug taking. We’d obviously love our users to get as much value out of the product as possible, so one of our biggest challenges is ensuring that users understand that the assessment takes time and focus, but that the payoff in terms of the insight you receive from the product is well worth the effort.

What can mobile commerce sites learn from Babylon, and vice versa?

Babylon isn’t really presented as a commerce app – while there are services users can pay for to get tests, insights, appointments etc., that’s not the focus, and that’s not what we’re trying to prioritise. Often our users come to us when they’re experiencing symptoms that they’re worried about, and of course our priority is to provide a seamless experience that gets them the information and support they need. By focusing on the needs of the user, we hope to build trust and reassure the user that Babylon is a service they can rely on. It’s difficult to translate this across to pure commerce, but focusing on the user’s immediate needs and priorities is hugely important for us.

That said, many commerce sites have very well structured conversion funnels, and I’m sure there are many insights we can take from those kinds of experiences to better convey what kind of offerings we provide to our users of our private service.

What’s the most surprising behaviour you’ve seen from mobile app visitors?

The most surprising behaviour we’ve seen is that we’re getting around 75% of our users to complete the assessment. Most equivalent assessments see conversion rates in the low single figures, so the fact we’re getting that rate is really valuable. We tested out a number of different ways of framing the assessment, in terms of conveying the value of the insights to users before they started, and we also experimented with the format – we provide a conversational chatbot experience rather than a standard form to fill in, which helps to engage users. It will be interesting to see how this evolves as we increase the range of diseases we provide, as they will be accompanied with more questions, and so we’ll need to decide whether users are still happy to take the assessment all in one go, or whether breaking it out more clearly would make sense.

What are the most important factors in an optimal mobile experience?

In general, people hate it when their screen gets too busy. The experience when you tap on a link to a site, which then fills the screen with multiple prompts for GDPR, cookie consent etc., is frankly awful. Whilst some of that is of course required by regulation, some sites can be tempted to grab the user’s attention by fitting as much information above the fold as possible, in the hope that one of the many items catches their eye. While in some situations this may work, most research shows that the far more compelling experience is a more sleek, refined, experience based around a single intent or purpose. Not only does that provide a clear purpose to the content you’re presenting, it also provides you with a clear metric of success that you can use to research and test how to add incremental value to your product.

What are the common mistakes most brands make when it comes to mobile strategy?

Criticising businesses for not being “mobile-first” has become a bit of a trope over the past few years, but it’s certainly true that it’s very difficult to get right. Often teams can evangelise enthusiastically about mobile, but when it comes to their development process they still build their desktop screens first, then essentially condense them for mobile. It’s not as simple as tweaking the design, and is much more dependent on research into understanding why the user’s interacting with you, and what they’re trying to do. By understanding that and ensuring that you’re expediting that as much as possible, you’ll keep their attention and stop them getting frustrated and resorting to searching elsewhere.

We’re potentially seeing a similar type of trend now with voice interaction – as smart home devices like Alexa and Google Home become more commonplace, more products will become available through the voice medium, and I’d happily bet that many of them will take the same approach and try to shoehorn their existing offering into a voice experience, rather than reconsider it from the bottom up. The first few products to get that experience right will create an incredible opportunity and reach for themselves.

What Contentsquare Learned at Shoptalk 2019

Contentsquare promised to show you the money at Shoptalk 2019 and we did. We held an interactive booth that put Shoptalk attendees to work on our wall, in search of hidden insights. Our guests went sleuthing for the code to our secret room, while our robot hung out with some of the visitors. Our team of UX-perts were on hand to demo our fabulous suite of digital experience analytics. And we also reaped a lot of knowledge regarding the intersection of retail and digital. Here are a few things we learned at Shoptalk 2019.

Influencer Marketing is Ramping Up

Influencer marketing, the practice of using influential people for brand awareness, is huge right now, and many brands are capitalizing on this magic formula of endorsement and audience rolled into one. What’s more is that it has the potential to not only raise brand awareness but to up revenues as well. Andrea Fasulo, the head of Consumer Products Marketing at Nickelodeon, divulged that Nick’s partnership with JoJo Siwa, a 15-year-old YouTuber, has increased their revenues as JoJo’s star rose. (The kid’s network added JoJo to their shows, apparel and toy lines). She now is worth about $1 billion and has a YouTube viewership of millions.

The success of this influencer partnership comes from her alignment with Nick’s brand. To infuse the influencer partnership with a feeling of validity, brands are pairing up with public figures who are passionate, or at least interested in their niche and products. In other words, with the right influencers, a business’s brand messaging looks less like an ad and more like genuine interest/usage of their offering.

But brands don’t necessarily need to reach out to big-name influencers; influencers with a relatively moderate to even a small following can go a long way for e-retailers. Cathey Curtis, the VP of Global Marketing for the surf and snowboard gear company Billabong, has revealed that the company’s Instagram posts that feature micro-influencers get 3 times more engagement than those that feature regular models.

Big Data Has Spawned the Rise of Artificial Intelligence

Data proliferation is no longer unusual, with most businesses pumping out onslaughts of data by the minute. The reliance of data is only increasing and when there’s an excess of data, it loses its digestibility — at least to human eyes and minds. That’s where artificial intelligence and machine learning come in. AI is at the fore of both data processing and how data is delivered to us.

Russell Scherwin, the CMO of Watson Commerce at IBM, spoke about AI at one of the sessions. “If you aren’t addressing AI, you’re behind,” he said. AI technology can help you discover the goings on of your website, without having to scout through a tiresome load of data. With AI technology at hand, brands can easily parse through their data and analytics to optimize their UX, personalize the customer journey and understand the most pressing issues regarding their sites.

Personalization is a Winning Strategy

E-commerce consumers are becoming more and more in want of a shopping experience tailored just towards them, or one built closely around their needs. With the constant bombardment of advertisements and brand messaging, usually with personal elements, consumers are looking to get the same kind of experience while perusing websites that are selling to them.

Personalization comes as a specialized strategy for UX optimization, as it will be different based on the different types of customers in the market. While many retailers have relied on creating emails that tap into their customers’ unique shopping tastes and experiences (ie, abandoned carts, product recommendations), there are far many other routes to take on the front of personalizing the customer journey.

Some of these methods include digital shelves, custom products, endless aisles, geo-targeting, personalized upsells, style finders and more.

Bouqs Co., an e-commerce flower seller based out of California has added special features to its site to increase the personalization factor.

These new features include giving customers the option of watching mini documentaries on the site. The documentaries exhibit the details of the farms which produce the bouquets before shoppers buy one. “We’re adding value beyond just the purchase and I think that’s a big part of the future of e-commerce,” said Bouqs founder John Tavis.

Implementing New Service Delivery Models to Meet Your Customers’ Needs

As part of a strategy to continue product subscriptions as well as to gain customers for single purchase goods, retailers are creating new delivery models. The revamping of delivery methods is part and parcel of the CX, or customer experience.

In this way, CX is an amalgamation of digital with physical experiences. The receipt of a delivery occurs in the physical world, while ordering it comes from digital.

Although customers may spend long periods of time scouring e-commerce sites, they may not always convert, not least where a delivery is involved.

Executives from Madison Reed, a hair care company, and Brandless, a food, beauty and personal care supplier, held a discussion on the fusion of digital and physical experiences. A major area of concern for this merger is the implementation of new service delivery models.

These new models include white label options, subscription boxes and various delivery methods to give brands the edge in a competitive retail market.

Shoptalk 2019

Signing off, we want to say that one of the best shows at the junction of e-commerce and retail certainly lived up to its name. Shoptalk 2019 was an outstanding and enlightening experience for us at Contentsquare and the visitors alike. We’ll definitely be back and we look forward to what the future of digital holds.