Creating a Community for the Future of Digital Transformation

A Crash Course in Digital Transformation 

For the past couple of years, digital transformation has dominated business conversation. For most companies, it is a major concern and strategic priority. Ironically, in a way, Covid-19 has thrust many businesses into a digital transformation crash course. They are confronting the realities of running completely remote businesses without any planning or strategy. They are having to build digital capabilities with no warning, research or preparation. Businesses are learning how to manage people from afar and keep company culture alive through Zoom calls, virtual town halls and happy hours. 

Many are reworking their operations to account for supply chain challenges. Some businesses are completely pivoting, reinventing the products and services they are offering. In New York, some restaurants are converting their spaces to grocery stores to sell the provisions that would otherwise have spoiled. And of course, we would be remiss in mentioning that many are also shuttering their doors forever. 

But, many are finding ways to adapt and accelerate. We are all pivoting, innovating, testing, trying. After all, innovation is often born out of crisis. 

Digital Transformation in Age of Unpredictability

In our current state, digital transformation has… transformed. People, businesses — we all are dependent on digital like never before. It is a lifeline for everyone right now, both on a personal and a professional level. As a result, digital transformation has taken on an entirely new meaning. 

During the last few months, customer bases have increased as more people are relying on digital and eCommerce. However, consumers’ needs have also evolved, and what they expect from brands today is not necessarily what they expected yesterday. Engaging and connecting with consumers goes beyond just providing a good experience. It requires empathy, giving back, understanding customers — and people, generally — on a new level. Businesses that are open to innovation, connected to their customers and their data, and practicing empathy are weathering the storm and charting new courses. 

I think we can all agree that while things might get back to some sense of normalcy, they will never be the same again. I don’t say it to be dramatic, rather, because the sooner we understand this simple fact, the better job we can do at adapting to what comes next. 

That begs the question: what is next in digital transformation?

Change is constant, but uncertainty doesn’t always have to be if you’ve got a solid, adaptive business strategy. The next chapter of digital transformation will see brands shift from having a digital strategy that worked once upon a time to one that works whatever happens.  

The Digital Changemakers: Dedicated to What’s Next in Digital

At Contentsquare, we’ve been asking ourselves this very question. We’ve been searching for ways to stay connected to our customers and community, while also preparing for the unpredictable. First, we focused on providing valuable, fresh weekly data on how coronavirus is impacting eCommerce on our COVID-19 hub. After all, we believe data is the first step to solving any challnge. But, we have also been asking ourselves, how can we contribute to our industry? How can we make a lasting impact? How can we make sure that we create positive change during a time of such turbulence? 

Two things came to mind: community and innovation. So, we decided to combine the two by creating a community dedicated to fostering innovation with the CX industry: the Digital Changemakers. 

Digital Predictions: Recipes for Conversion Health in 2020

You’ve spent the last few weeks making merry with friends and family, and it’s likely you overindulged. Today, you don’t want to look at another cookie, and you’ve swapped the booze for green juice. You’ve resolved to fill the next decade with yoga and maybe even meditation.

But what are you going to do to improve your digital strategy in 2020? How are you going to go about building a healthier, nourishing, more blissful experience for your customers? 

Here is our roundup of 7 trends we think should guide your digital resolutions this year.

1. The experience wars heat up

The numbers have been out for a while: the gulf between businesses’ perception of their own customer satisfaction versus the consumer’s reality is widening. On the other hand, brands that are synonymous with excellent Customer Experience (CX) are reaping outsized benefits. According to a Forrester report, insight-driven companies are growing 7-10x faster than the average enterprise.

The key to a great CX lies with… your customers. The new standards of experience demand greater, smarter customer proximity — one that hinges on a true understanding of what your audience expects and how it wants to connect with you in 2020 and beyond. If you choose not to go all-in on creating an unexpectedly great experience this year, you do so at your own peril.

2. Leaders scramble for new metrics

Knowing how your brand stacks up to customer expectations — and how many different factors from price, to app ease of use, to customer support — contribute to the experience is still a challenge. This is the year many digital professionals will rebel and demand meaningful analytics that are easy-to-consume. Many brands are finding themselves constrained by old metrics, which can tell you how many people visited your site, and how many converted, but don’t offer many clues as to why they left without buying, or if a purchase was in fact the primary goal of their visit. 

When it comes to understanding customers, metrics such as content attractiveness and engagement, friction scores and even an objective measure of consumers’ Digital Happiness paints the story between the clicks. You’ll see more CX Index and e-NPS type metrics coming out from agencies, consulting firms and analytics players this year to help meet the demand.

Having access to a system of insights that can capture the nuances and fluctuations of customer behavior, and translate these into actions is how you turn customer intelligence into intelligent CX.

3. More brands flip the acquisition model

Digital teams understand that getting as many people as possible through the door is no longer a viable business strategy. It’s simply too expensive and it is not in fact, a customer-centric approach. Why invite someone in unless you can actually deliver value to them? More brands are shifting their focus to analyzing what happens once customers are on their site in order to better understand who they should be marketing to in the first place, and how.

Think about it — not everyone will want to convert on your site (maybe they’re here to check out in-store availability, use the store locator, etc), and those who do will have a specific customer agenda (they might want to see if a coupon works, to check out fast on their smartphone, etc). The key is to understand: 1) what are your high-value segments, 2) how they like to browse.

By analyzing and understanding the journeys and behavior of customers who are already on your site or app, you can surface intelligence about what they’re trying to do, and in turn, use this intelligence to target specific segments with highly relevant experiences. Don’t forget: the best remedy for churn is a relevant customer experience.

4. Smarter content

Which brings us to content (…don’t all roads lead to content?).

Businesses invest a ton of time and resources into creating content that communicates the brand’s offering and helps customers connect with their values. But how do you measure the impact of content decisions? How do you know what content to display for which audience? How do you maximize your creative investments and merchandising strategy?

Well, it goes back to those smarter metrics. Your customers are giving you real-time feedback on your content with every swipe, tap, scroll, click, etc — each element of your site is either a relevant step in the journey, a distraction, or worse, an obstacle. Customer journey insights are finally becoming operational at scale. And, advanced AI-driven analytics will help translate this customer feedback into actions your team can take to improve the experience and your bottom line. Don’t be left behind.

5. Personalization partners with privacy

Brands in 2020 are going to become better at combining their personalization efforts with their customers’ privacy concerns. Why? Because consumers today want more of both. High profile data breaches and an overload of personalized marketing that isn’t in fact that relevant have made consumers wary of oversharing in the digital world.

But is it really possible to personalize without personal info? We think it is. The beauty of behavioral data is that it delivers on both these demands: privacy and personalization.

Because one consumer does not equate one way to browse a website. And just because a brand knows your name, birthday, address and a few of your interests, doesn’t mean they know what drives you crazy when you’re trying to refill a standing cat food order on your mobile. By analyzing and aggregating the behavior of specific customer segments (based on their context and intent) digital teams can unlock a much deeper, truer type of personalization than that made possible by demographic data. 

And if you are going to collect data, the key is to use it well. Be transparent and clear about any request for personal information — customers are often willing to give information that is genuinely going to add value for them.

6. D2C is the new flagship store

Marketplaces don’t afford brands the same level of control over the end-to-end customer experience as direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketing. By entrusting others to promote and sell their products or services, businesses are not only settling for lower margins; they’re essentially giving away crucial customer intelligence they could be using to elevate and personalize the brand experience. 

And when you’re competing on experience, as brands are today, owning the relationship with your customers so you can better meet their needs and expectations — and strengthen your community at the same time — is crucial.

This isn’t an entirely new phenomenon, and it’s not only reserved for new, agile startup companies. Leading brands like GoPro have shifted their strategy, and are putting more emphasis on owning the end to end experience, and cultivating a meaningful, enduring relationships with their customers on their digital properties.

7. Inclusivity becomes core to your digital strategy

According to the CDC, one in 4 U.S. adults has a disability that impacts major life activities. So if your website and app are not accessible to everyone, that’s 61 million people (in America only) you’re not including in your CX decisions.

The good news is when you design for disability first, you often come up with solutions that are more advanced and smarter than if you hadn’t. Brands everywhere are putting innovation at the service of inclusivity, and are leveraging new technology to future-proof the CX, improve accessibility, and ensure customer-centricity is not just for some, but for everyone.

Final thoughts

We’re heading into a new decade of innovation, digital creativity and intelligent technology. Your best strategists in 2020 and beyond will be your own customers. The key will be to tune into their expectations and align your experience strategy with their goals. 

It’s time to get a new yoga mat, and a new solution to translate customer behavior into profitable CX actions. As you navigate your favorite sites to find the first, think of the dozens of micro-decisions you take as a consumer: click on this image over that one, filter by size, give up halfway through a scroll, login as guest, etc. 

We help brands make the journey to digital wellness more seamless and satisfying. The rest is up to you.

 

 

Hero Image via Shutterstock, by Boiarkina Marina

Driving Innovation: How Brooks Bell is Helping Brands Achieve Experimentation Excellence

At Contentsquare, we have a rich ecosystem of technology and strategic partners, built around the needs and business objectives of customer-centric companies and experience-driven brands.

We spoke with Gregory Ng, the CEO of Brooks Bell, and asked him for his thoughts on experimentation and personalization in the age of experience.

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Can you tell us a bit more about Brooks Bell?

Founded in 2003, Brooks Bell is a consulting firm focused on building world-class experimentation programs for enterprise brands.

Working out of our headquarters in Raleigh, NC, we’ve spent the last 16 years helping companies better leverage their data, technology, and workforce to learn about their customers and deliver a smarter and more profitable online experience.

Our team is 43-strong and made up of creative thinkers, data scientists, developers and strategists. Everyone—from our operations team to our senior leadership—has a genuine appreciation for the art and science of optimization and a deep understanding of the challenges of experimentation at top-tier companies.

Our client roster consists of many large enterprises and recognizable brands that have trusted our team to assess their experimentation maturity and consult on multi-year “test and learn” roadmaps to achieve true customer-centricity.

What are some of the different ways you work with businesses?

Most of our engagements begin with a maturity assessment to benchmark and measure the growth of an experimentation program. This comprehensive, data-driven review scores your program against our proprietary framework consisting of six main categories: culture, team, technology, process, strategy and performance. The results of this assessment are used to create an actionable roadmap to get your program to the next level. What that roadmap looks like and the scope of our services depends on where your program lies on the maturity spectrum.

For clients that are very early in their experimentation journey, we offer a “we do, they watch” type of partnership. In this, our team comes in and fully manages a client’s experimentation program: learning their business and customers, organizing data, building a strategy, launching tests and analyzing and reporting the results. This partnership model is most effective for programs that need to prove the value of testing before going all in.

For clients that are a little further along, we take a more collaborative approach focused on educating what is needed to build a high-functioning program In this type of partnership, our team works alongside theirs. As we run end-to-end tests, we teach the team our methodologies, practices and frameworks. Through this model, we’re able to build the foundational knowledge and practices to set the experimentation program up for scale.

Finally, as the experimentation practice becomes more mature, we transition our services to be less tactical and more strategic. We’ve helped many clients bring their experimentation efforts fully in-house through building training and on-boarding programs, aligning the experimentation process across teams, establishing an Experimentation Center of Excellence, and offering strategic advice in response to new trends, technologies and business challenges.

How critical is experimentation for driving innovation today?

Critical is putting it lightly. 

In order to compete in today’s market, companies need to have a scientifically sound method in place to learn about customers, to change and to innovate—all while limiting risk, streamlining operations and reducing costs. Experimentation offers the best way to accomplish all of that.

That means, for us, our value is not simply in running tests and helping our clients make more money—though that is definitely a major outcome of our efforts (and one that we’re very proud of). Rather, our work is about empowering our clients with the data, skills, processes and technology to use testing to glean powerful customer insights AND operationalize those insights across your entire organization.

How do you help brands elevate their experimentation/personalization strategy?

Our Maturity Assessment is really only the tip of the iceberg here. Over the last 16 years, we’ve built and honed many frameworks, training programs, practices and even proprietary technology to help our clients elevate their testing and personalization strategies.

For instance, after witnessing some very messy brainstorming sessions, we developed our ideation methodology, which provides a guided approach to developing and prioritizing test ideas in a large, cross-functional group.

Our Insights framework offers a method for connecting your experiment results to bigger picture customer theories and insights.

And finally, we built Illuminate™, our testing and insight management software, to help program managers store, share and learn from their A/B test results. Fun fact: Illuminate was originally built as an internal tool to help us keep track of our client’s tests. In 2018, after many years of tweaking, testing, gathering feedback (and some rave reviews from our clients), we decided to make it available to the public.

These are just a few examples of how we provide value to clients. I should also add that we host Click Summit, an annual conference where digital leaders gather to swap ideas and share tips on testing, personalization, analytics, and digital transformation.

Click Summit trades in all the typical things you’d find at a tech conference: sales pitches, powerpoint presentations and fireside “chats” held in giant auditoriums. Instead, the agenda is built around a series of small-group (15 people) conversations, each focused on a specific topic.

With attendance is limited to just 100 digital leaders, it’s a unique opportunity to tackle your biggest challenges by talking it out with people who have been there before.

What constitutes a good partnership for you?

We love partnering with companies and tech providers (like Contentsquare!) who share our vision of helping our clients find the people within their data and seek to make every day better through optimization.

There are tons of ways in which we can translate Contentsquare’s excellent user experience analytics into optimization opportunities.

Here are a few off the top of my head:

What are your plans for the future?

When Brooks Bell was founded back in 2003, testing was in its infancy. Now, it’s rare that we come across a client that hasn’t run at least a few tests. This is exciting! It means we get to focus on working even closer with our clients and making a bigger impact.

I’m talking more than just conversion increases and revenue lift. The task before us no longer ends at proving the value of experimentation. We’re now in the business of generating insights. By helping companies learn about their customers and fostering experimentation at a cultural level, our clients will be equipped to deliver the best digital experience for their customers.

Investing in experimentation requires taking both a short and long-term view. We look forward to celebrating the day-to-day wins with our community, while also staying focused on the vision of building customer-centric, digitally-forward and insights-driven organizations.

 

How We’re Empowering Brands to Improve Lives Through Digital Experiences

At Contentsquare, we envision a world where every digital interaction improves lives.

As we spend more and more time online these days, it’s important to us that the user experience and customer journey are meaningful.

But today, the digital world is plagued by poor experiences. Brands have traditionally been unable to deliver the experiences customers want online because they haven’t been able to easily understand what their customers really want. It’s not just about making sure your customers can find the right product pages or the contact us page — it’s much more nuanced than that. Your customer’s changeable mindset and intent can completely change their behavior online, and most brands can’t tailor the experience needed on demand.

But we do believe that brands have the ability to improve people’s lives. Making the time you spend online more meaningful doesn’t have to be impossible — and so our strategy for achieving our vision has always been to empower brands with unique behavioral insights to create better experiences.

To that end, we took the strategic decision to acquire experience analytics company Clicktale in July 2019. While both Contentsquare and Clicktale are rooted in customer behavioral data and insights, Clicktale’s session replay and heatmaps complement Contentsquare’s page zoning and customer journeys capabilities. Today, just 90 days after that acquisition, we are releasing major new capabilities of the Contentsquare platform, which includes innovation driven by the combined R&D and product team of more than 170 innovators strong.

9 trillion reasons to use Contentsquare

Now, we can confidently offer the most complete experience analytics platform on the market. None of our competitors can give you the level of insight into your customer behavior we can thanks in part to the fact that our solution analyses 9 trillion digital interactions every day for each of our customers.
Now, the combined product is the only complete system of insight that offers brands the ability to do all of the following:

No other solution can give you a better level of insight to help you understand and create insight-driven innovation.

Into the future — where our product will sit within the customer touchpoints ecosystem

Improving any kind of digital experience, whether it’s on desktop, mobile or any other channel, starts with collecting the right kind of behavioral data. Customers behave differently depending on the touchpoint you interact with them on, and so it’s important to measure precisely how those customers are using your channels so you can tailor the experience accordingly.

And behaviors won’t necessarily stay the same over time, either, so simply analyzing behavior just once won’t be enough. You need to continuously measure behavior over time so you can tailor your experience to whatever nuanced behavioral changes your customers portray.

But the touchpoints themselves are starting to evolve. In the next three years or so, we’re going to see a shift in the types of interactions between brands and customers. By 2021, experiences will be more conversational, mobile, personalized, social and immersive. All these trends are going to transform the customer touchpoints ecosystem, whether it’s the brand’s own digital channels, physical channels, third-party channels or marketplaces.

If you want to create a great overall experience for your customers, you can’t solely focus on your own digital channels like your desktop and mobile sites. You have to provide a consistent experience across all touchpoints and do the marketing basics (like providing the right product at the right price) well. That’s why our vision for our product is to help you with a significant proportion of those touchpoints — beyond just digital.

Once you’re measuring all your channels though, the key, of course, is to unify all that data and product intuitive visualizations so even the non-digital business units in your organization can understand it and draw insights from it. Only then can we start to realize a vision where digital interactions improve lives — when the whole organization is on board.

Those organizations that lead on digital experience tend to see benefits of 3–5x on measures such as lead generation, conversion, price premiums and loyalty as a result of offering a great experience across the board. And customers are more likely to pay a premium price when they have a great experience versus a poor one.

At Contentsquare, we can help you to compete with the digital leaders, and help you gain an insight into your customers like never before. Request a demo to find out how.