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.
Contentsquare is heading to Shoptalk and we’re bringing with us our AI expertise, an unmissable interactive booth experience and an art duo performance you won’t forget any time soon.
This will be our second consecutive year attending the conference — an annual 4-day event that brings together over 8,000 individuals working in retail, startups, tech companies, media and more.
We’ve been chosen as one of the few tech companies to speak at the event, and our very own Founder and CEO Jonathan Cherki will be discussing the integration of artificial intelligence with retail as part of the Technologies Transforming Retail: Artificial Intelligence program.
Aside from AI, the conference will feature other presentations aimed at fostering trends, technologies and business models for the future of retail.
We’re bringing our own big ideas to life at Shoptalk this year at our booth, not least our belief in the power of experience.
We Do Business Conferences Differently
Last year we threw a huge party at Shoptalk to celebrate our then $42 million in Series B funding. Dovetailing off of last year’s theme, this year’s booth will be just as celebratory. (If you haven’t heard by now, we’ve raised $60 million in Series C funding).
But we’re not just celebrating our successful funding procurement. In a nod to our software’s revenue attribution feature, this year we’re going to show you the money. At least for our interactive space at the conference this year.
Given that we position ourselves as leaders when it comes to user experience, we don’t just talk the talk. Our booth and interactive experience will prove that we also walk the walk.
Contentsquare at Shoptalk 2018.
Show Me the Money
With Contentsquare, don’t expect a mundane exhibition of a table and placard at our booth. Since we’ve set the bar high last year with the party booth, this year we’re coming back with something even more exciting and interactive.
Show me the Money is a hands-on experience, very much in tune with our raison d’être of creating profitable experiences that engage and give way to conversions.
If you pay us a visit at booth #4526, you’ll be invited to interact with our wall of hidden insights, which holds the key to unlocking our secret chamber. We’ve hidden 20 user experience (UX) insights gleaned by our data experts, and your job is to hunt for them.
This experience mimics what Contentsquare does to a website. This will allow visitors to literally reveal what’s obscure in a playful, participatory way.
Concealed among the insights is the secret code that will grant visitors entry to our secret chamber, which contains a surprise you’ve got to see to believe. It will make for an excellent opportunity to basque in the (confidential) brilliance of the room and snap a fabulous selfie.
What Else to Expect at Shoptalk 2019
Shoptalk is slated to run from March 3rd to March 6th at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. Contentsquare’s session on AI takes place on March 4th at 8:30 am.
But there is plenty more to experience at Shoptalk this year besides the sessions and meetings.
Back by popular demand is the performance art duo the Bumbys, masked performers who will take one benevolent look at you and create your own, customized personality appraisal. They don’t talk, rather they type out their assessment the old-fashioned way: on a typewriter.
The Bumbys have been around since 2008, performed nationally and have gotten the attention of major publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post — you don’t want to miss them!
We’re also bringing out our robot — a life-size figure you can interact (and pose) with.
We hope to see you there!
Our life-size robot
We recently wrapped up an amazing few days at the NRF (National Retail Federation) trade show, where we took part in panels and shared best practices with some of the biggest movers and shakers in the realm of UX and retail.
Hobnobbing along with Business France, its accompanying 19 French startups and the thousands of retailers, exhibitors and attendees at the conference, our team walked away with fascinating insights about the future of retail, and the intersection of technology and customer experience.
Trusting Data Over Intuition
A major trend for 2019 that has descended upon retailers — both the digital and brick-and-mortar kinds — is the incorporation of data as part of the customer acquisition strategy. In fact, telecommunications giant Comcast Business and its subsidiary Xfinity are partnering to implement data-based best practices into physical stores.
These best practices will aim to offer immersive customer experiences to brick-and-mortar customers, similar to how effective digital customer journeys work in UX. Comcast Business and its subsidiary posited that in order to lure in more customers to physical stores, they will need to design captivating experiences.
That’s where behavioral data comes into the strategy, as it would be impossible to construct these experiences without the relevant data to back them up. Additionally, this data can include consumer insights and employee engagement. All in all, this trend asserts that in order for businesses to survive in an omni-channel marketplace, gathering and leveraging data must be put at the forefront.
Streamlining the Buying Process
With shoppers less and less forgiving when it comes to digital convenience, brands are continuing to invest effort and resources in streamlining the buying process. This too can be applied online and in a brick-and-mortar store. Efficiency and speed are at the core of streamlining, so it is no surprise that retailers have taken notice of its importance to customers, instead of merely to its internal operations.
A streamlined purchase can be achieved by creating simpler cart actions, ones that require fewer steps to the checkout. Improving the overall UX so the customer journey can be easy and hurdle-free from start to finish also contributes to streamlining the buying process online. This translates to forming landing pages with easier paths to checkouts and clearer CTAs.
In a nutshell, identifying visitors’ goals and helping them achieve these goals pain-free is the cornerstone of a successful UX.
International Connectivity Via Payment/ Currency Optimizations
We also took note of the rise of the Latin American market as a key retail target for both brick-and-mortar and pure player businesses. As the Latin American market waxes, it brings with it the international market into the retail playing arena. This begs the question of how to make it internationally, especially when one of your business goals involved breaking into countries aside from the one in which your business is headquartered.
This will prompt businesses to cater to the international community with currency optimization, accept a wider range of cards and expand payment methods (think cryptocurrency or proprietary loyalty points as ways to pay).
In one of the panels, the worldwide fintech company Fexco proposed optimizing currency handling at checkouts. This way, retail offerings can be made easily accessible to users of different currencies.
Fexco provides financial services solutions such as currency conversions, multi-currency pricing, retail foreign exchanges among others. It primarily features merchant products and is seeking to provide data about payments. Thus, even the financial aspect of retail dutifully relies on data.
Contentsquare’s Lessons on the Rise of Experiential Retail
Our own Chief Strategy and Partnership Officer, Jean-Marc Bellaiche, led a speech on emerging trends within retail at NRF, as part of a panel called “The Rise of Experiential Retail.” The discussion identified 3 key trends in retail and what brands can do to stay ahead of the curve.
3 Key Trends in Retail:
1. The acceleration of the convergence between online and offline marketplaces. A digital platform and physical store are not separate entities anymore. Generation Z, which is now in the workforce and has entered the market to buy, are very much the target market within this convergence. Buying online is second nature to them and yet they still value the experience of going to a physical store.
Digitally native pure play brands like the makeup brand Glossier have understood this double-need, opening physical stores to enhance the interactive shopping experience and to give consumers a more first-hand experience with the products and services they seek out.
2. Consumers are demanding more from their in-store shopping experiences. They are looking for more sophisticated, tailored experiences, similar to the kind of personalized experience an online experience can provide. An ordinary, uninspired brick-and-mortar shopping experience will not be enough to draw customers into physical stores. Thus, businesses will have to get more creative in their selling approach at such stores.
3. There is a growing awareness on user data privacy, going beyond GDPR (General Data Protection), an EU regulation which stipulates data protection and privacy for its citizens and data subjects. While this is persistent in Europe, it is has entered the picture in the U.S., and there is increasing demand for data privacy to essentially make user data anonymous, e.g. in the case of major US-based social media brands like Facebook and Twitter.
2 Requirements for Retailers
1. Enrich your online experience to emulate that of a store’s. Stores are equipped with the space and personnel to provide good experiences for potential customers. A store assistant can respond to customer behavior in real time. Additionally, a store can provide personalized events — yoga, an actual breakfast at Tiffany’s, etc.
Create memorable experiences online requires the same observation and analysis of consumer behavior. Analytics help retailers understand what consumers are experiencing and this knowledge can be leveraged by teams to augment the site, and deliver satisfying, converting experiences. Furthermore, since consumers are communicating with a brand through every digital interaction, it’s a sound strategy to incorporate analytics to ease personalization.
Another way to enrich the experience is to apply “retailtainment” to both brick-and-mortar and digital, which author George Ritzer defines as the “use of ambience, emotion, sound and activity to get customers interested in the merchandise and in a mood to buy.”
2. Personalize without personal information. Using aggregated behavioral data instead of the data from a single individual maintains your customers’ privacy while helping brands achieve customization.
In Contentsquare for example, you can tap into the emotions and frustrations of site visitors from the standpoint of population segments, while remaining GDPR-compliant through encryptions. That way, you have the data on your visitors en masse, or at least in portions. You won’t be able to see what they enter in sensitive form fields due to the anonymization of certain information that they provide. With this data, you can then customize your content to appeal to different segments.
Closing Off
The panel closed of with some statistics that got jocular. When attendees were asked what percentage of them have personalized websites, their answers tallied to roughly 25%.
When asked how many of them have what might be defined as the ultimate personalization, a tattoo, the answer was rounded out to 36%.
Personalizing a website is clearly not as second nature to brands and their marketers as tattoos have become to a wide swath of the American population. Clearly, there’s work to be done on the website personalization front.
We’re looking forward to continuing the conversation and collecting even more insights at future conferences like the Adobe Summit and Shoptalk.