UX International Map Lessons: Product Page Optimization

Welcome to the second installment in our 3-part series on the Global UX Map, the result of our extensive research into digital trends and browsing patterns from across the world. This insightful series is a surefire way to improve your user experience (UX) and boost your digital marketing efforts. In this chapter, we will be focusing on product page optimization.

If your marketing tactics are successful enough to impel users to land on the product page — or if they clicked into it by virtue of their own interest, that is magnificent news. It means your advertising, SEO and content campaigns were competent enough to push users to the page where actual purchase decisions are made. But getting visitors onto the product page is not enough and certainly doesn’t guarantee conversions.

Like your homepage, blog and other site pages, the product page must keep visitors engaged and digitally happy to encourage them to buy. But if there’s one thing we all know about user experience, it’s that one size most definitely doesn’t fit all. And when you have a global patronage — or are seeking to break into the international market — taking into account the needs and expectations of your local audiences is key. UX Analysis Methodology 

As you’ve learned in our previous UX map lesson, we drew our insights from analyzing over 35 million visitor sessions from January through February 2019, on 11 luxury websites in 7 countries. This adds up to 150 million pageviews and 3 billion clicks. 

The 7 countries from which we extracted data on the product page are the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, China and Japan. By analyzing how visitors in each of these countries interact with the various elements of the product page, we were able to understand what works and what doesn’t, and where brands should focus optimizations to drive maximum engagement. 

Visitors In China Most Engaged With the Product Page

While studying the user behavior on the product page across the 7 countries, one country in particular stood out due to its heightened engagement. Consumers in China clicked and scrolled between  1.5 to 5 times more than those in the other 6 countries we surveyed. They also spent more time on the page (25% more than the global average), avidly consuming both informational and visual content.

In fact, the data makes known that users in China often research a product extensively before adding to cart, navigating through many elements on the page, and generally consuming more content than visitors in any of the other regions we looked at.

They were particularly engaged with the product description, clicking on it over 23% more than their global peers. They were also far more interested in the shipping and returns description, with a click rate higher than other countries by over a heaping 95%. With many brands selling exclusively online, shipping costs are often an expensive and unavoidable expense, explaining this extra attention. 

Visitors in China also spent much more time viewing product images than their international counterparts, and were 50% more likely to click on the first product image than their global peers — an upward trend that continues onto the following images. 

Product Delivery and Shipping Descriptions: Vital in Japan

Descriptions on the product page go a long way to reassuring shoppers in general, as does clear information on shipping and returns. This is most discernible in Japan, where mobile consumers are often reluctant to make a purchase before reading all the information about a product of interest, including its shipping and returns policy. 

In fact, the click rate on the product description is 47% higher in Japan than in any of the other regions we studied, and the click rate on the shipping and delivery info, 48% higher.

The US and UK Have a Stronghold on Customer Trust

Visitors in the US and UK spend less time interacting with the product page. In both regions, product visuals receive 22% fewer clicks on the first product images and 53% fewer ones on the third click, compared to global averages. 

The scroll rate on the product page in the US and UK is also lower than the global average, coming in at 53% versus 56% for the rest of the world. The click rate on the textual content is also considerably smaller in the US and UK than in the global average. 

Precisely, the click rate on product descriptions sits at about 4.1%, versus a 4.5% global average. Meanwhile, the click rate on the shipping info in the US and UK is roughly 0.5%, while globally it’s at 0.7%. 

With truncated engagement on the product page, visitors from the US and UK clearly have less time in their customer journey to take in the content on this page. Instead, they make hastier decisions, so you have to catch their interests quicker than those from the other European and Asian countries. If you do, you will earn their trust, proven by their quicker conversions, which occur without skimming through visuals and reading content that’s further down the page.

Visuals Take Priority in Germany and Italy 

Chinese visitors on product pages aren’t the only ones captivated by visual content. Much like these constituents, visitors in Germany and Italy also show high levels of engagement around product images. These visitors click 7% more than their global counterparts on the first image, 6% more on the second and 28% more on the third on all devices.

Visitors in Germany also have a favorability towards the product description, clicking on this element 11% more than the other countries surveyed. As such, this element is crucial in their customer decision journey. A product description may compel or dissuade these users from making a purchase, so assure that your product descriptions are up to par, being both informative and marketing-friendly to convince your German audience to buy.

Product Images in Relation to the Product Page for Visitors in France 

The use of the product page in France can seem to be contradictory — giving the impression of both a low and high engagement of the page. Visitors in France are much less engaged on virtually every element on the product page, with fewer clicks on product descriptions, shipping info and images, coupled with shorter session times.

However, despite a low session time and engagement with these elements, shoppers in France total in a 60% higher time spent on page than the other 6 countries. This discrepancy relays an audience that is not as interested in content related to the product so much as interest in the product itself. 

As such, these users shouldn’t be disregarded; they are still good candidates for conversions, but they must be interested in the product from the get-go, so you should use other marketing channels to promote your products, so by the time shoppers arrive at your product pages, they’ll be interested enough to convert, or learn more. 

Refining the Product Page for a Global Audience with UX Recommendations

Product page optimization begins with making the right changes or additions to your product pages across its global editions. No matter how optimized your product page appears to be, remember that it won’t be received in the same manner globally. Here are several data-backed suggestions on product page optimization from a globally-oriented perspective. 

For US and UK visitors, opt for simplicity; there is no room for clutter for the least engaged duo in the product page. Align your text and images with a minimalistic style — nominal text, low interactions, large images and as little scroll as possible. The goal is to create a quick and easy consumption of the page. Don’t both laying out a shipping policy, as users from these countries are accustomed to cheap shipping and free returns. 

The UX optimization of the product page on your Chinese site is in direct opposition to the US and UK, since users there are much enthused about content on the product page. Since users in China are prone to scrolling, design your page with a vertical interface. You can rest assured that loading your product page with content will stimulate high engagement. Feel free to add affiliate links, reviews, images, descriptions, articles, etc. You should pay close attention to the product and shipping descriptions since there is high engagement there. Visitors in China are less certain on shipping, so give them cost-efficient options. For more slider engagement, speed up your load time; it is notoriously slow in China.

Much like China, the consumption of product and shipping descriptions is also high in Germany and Italy, particularly on mobile. Posit your product in the best possible light in these descriptions and provide all the relevant info on them, as visitors in Germany and Italy are inclined to read them. Make sure they are easy to access on mobile.

Since product imagery has a decent performance in Germany and Italy, don’t be scant in your product images on your site in these countries. Include at least 4 product images per product page. To ensure slideshow images are seen, implement visible arrows on the slideshow. While both countries are fans of images, visitors in Germany prefer horizontal navigation in the carousels, while Italians favor the vertical variety. Don’t forget to add a zoom function on your images.

Since users in France have a rather contradictory behavior on the product page — a long time spent on the page but few interactions with individual elements, you have to optimize accordingly. This may appear challenging, but luckily, there is a way to maintain a balance between few interactions and high consumption. To achieve this balance, insert a summary of the content above the fold with anchors that steer users further down. A long time spent on page means that these users are willing to consume it, so long as they don’t scroll. 

Optimizing the Product Page

As there is no marketing “one size fits all” strategy, the same should be applied to your globally existing product pages. As our UX map findings show, browsing behaviors vary from country to country, and it’s enlightening to be able to identify and sort them into different global localities. Localizing the user experience begins at understanding what needs to change and which areas of the UX require the most attention. To capitalize on this localization, you should continue studying user behaviors through unique metrics like scroll rate, time spent on element, conversion rate per click and more. 

The Global UX Map: Menu, Search Bar and Slideshow Usage Around the World

Digital marketers, website developers and ecommerce businesses from far and wide: welcome to a 3-part blog series constructed from our Global UX Map — an in-depth report on digital customer behavior from around the globe.

While we strongly recommend you download our UX map, which offers a wealth of data-backed insights on how worldwide site visitors browse websites and interact with specific pages/ in-page elements, this series will condense some of these topics for a more organized, topic-based read. As such, this series is set to help you increase your ecommerce conversions in a more focused way.

In this round, we’ll illuminate our recent findings on the menu, search bar and slideshow usage through a global lens, and provide tips on how to optimize these elements to cater to your international or US-based audience. 

UX Analysis Methodology

We ran our UX analysis on over 35 million visitor sessions from January and February 2019, on 11 luxury sites in 7 countries. This rendered 150 million page views and 3 billion clicks. 

We observed visitor interactions with the menu, search bar and slideshow starting domestically, in the United States. Our international analysis gathered data from 4 European countries: France, Germany, the UK and Italy. Additionally, we studied the UX in 2 Asian countries: China and Japan.

The aforesaid UX elements we studied all exist on homepages, so this post will discuss the top-priorities for the homepage in particular. These 3 UX elements all point to critical visitor mindsets — determined if they leverage the search bar, seeking inspiration from the slideshow, or methodically browsing the menu. 

The Attractiveness Depends on the Device

The menu, search bar and carousel have varying levels of attractiveness depending on the device, and visitors engage differently with these 3 UX elements on mobile and desktop. 

Desktop visitors, for example, are more likely to engage with these features than their mobile counterparts, except in the UK. There, mobile visitors clocked in 7% more interactions with the menu, search bar and slideshow combined than desktop users. 

In all other countries, except China, mobile yields 20% fewer interactions with the menu, search bar and slideshow. In China, this lowered attractiveness is compounded, with mobile driving 70% fewer interactions than desktop. 

Per these findings, you should expect more usage of all 3 UX elements on desktop, and you should be thinking about ways to efficiently and seamlessly guide customer journeys on mobile

The Slideshow: Not Getting Much Love from the US and Italy

The click rate on the menu, search bar and slideshow differs from country to country; some regional audiences are much more likely to click on these top homepage navigation elements. 

France has the highest combined click rate on all three of these elements on desktop (see above), while the UK has the highest click rate on these elements on mobile (49%). 

Users in the US, however, are not so click-happy when it comes to these top homepage elements, as they average in the lowest click rate of all the countries surveyed on desktop, roughly 43%. The US also holds the second lowest click rate on mobile, at 33%, only to be outdone by China, which has the lowest click rate on mobile, with only 13%.

As for the slideshow, visitors in the US and Italy show the least interest in this feature. The US has the lowest slideshow desktop click rate, at only 3.7%, followed by Italy, at 3.8%. Across all the countries we studied, the slideshow and the search bar received the least amount of interactions, with the menu coming out on top.

Slideshows drive small engagement in the US and Italy.


Visuals are a Big Engagement Driver in China and Japan 

Visual elements are a crucial ingredient of a good UX in China and Japan, as they produce the most engagement and fastest time to first click. Indeed, visitors in China and Japan are among the first to click on the slideshow. Japan proves that images rule, with the shortest time to first click — 87% faster than the global overage. The time to first click in China is 28% faster than that of the other countries.

While the slideshow is well-received by visitors in Japan and China, the search bar and menu don’t forge a good UX for these audiences, especially on mobile. These 2 site elements garner less interactions within these countries due to their complex writing systems. These elements are ill-adapted to Japanese and Chinese and it shows in the data, particularly in China, where the menu has 74% less engagement and the search bar 60% less than in the other countries. 

While visuals do well in China and Japan, the menu and search bar underperforms in these countries on mobile.

The Search Bar and Menu: Successful in the UK 

Unlike visitors in Japan and China, those in the UK are much engaged with the menu and search bar, as they depend on it more than any of the surveyed countries. Certain in what they want, this audience is eager to find the quickest path to product. 

Opposing the UX in Japan and China, the search bar is crystal clear to UK visitors, who use it roughly 45% more than the users in all of the other countries we surveyed. Mobile visitors in the UK also dominate in menu use, and are 50% more likely to rely on this feature than anywhere else.

Specifically, the UK click rate on the menu comes in at 38.3%, the highest out of all the countries on desktop. Its click rate on the search bar is also the highest, at 6.7%.

The Menu Reels in the Best Usage in France and Germany

The menu is the most preferred navigation element in France and Germany, which reels in over 15% and over 11% higher engagement, respectively. Visitors in the UK and Italy are also highly reliant on the menu, while Chinese and Japanese visitors rarely use this function.

With a much heftier use of the menu in Europe, you ought to capitalize it by making it adhere to a clear, visual hierarchy. But it should also have an air of simplicity to maintain its good results for these countries.

More Formulated UX Tips from our Data on a Country Basis  

Here are a few more tips we extracted from our data assembly: 

Visitors in the US, UK and Italy are determined in their browsing and are looking for the shortest, most direct path to the product. So there’s no need to cram the slideshow. Instead, feature a highly visible, sticky search bar on mobile. This will assure that no matter how far down these global users scroll on the homepage, they’ll have an omnipresent shortcut to the product. Make sure this UX element is fully optimized: enabling an autocomplete function for all search queries will also appeal to this audience.

A general deduction of the European countries we examined is that visitors in these countries are highly engaged with the menu. Optimize it for desktop with a hoverable dropdown feature for ease of use. On mobile, a hamburger icon is a popular, quick menu access solution.

Accentuate the bestselling items on desktop and create a shortlist of recommended products and product categories. Another great UX strategy is to suggest content based on searches such as blog posts, videos, etc. This also presents a solid internal linking opportunity — not all of your content will be stumbled upon by SEO.

Remember, audiences in China and Japan interact heavily with visuals. Go bold with the slideshow: meld in dynamic content such as standout colors, videos and inspiring images. Use product links on the slideshow to lessen the path to purchases. Each image does not have to be bound by one product link. 

Since the use of the menu and search bar is low in these countries, add a sticky navigation bar, so it stays in your users’ site even as they scroll down the page.

Optimizing Navigation UX

That does it for our findings on the usage of the menu, search bar and slideshow across 7 countries. It’s time to start tailoring the UX of these site elements in line with the expectations of your local audience. 

Localizing the user experience is not simply limited to applying the language of the country your website is tailored for. Brands that can localize the experience in accordance with user expectations and habits will be well poised to improve retention and conversion rates, allowing them to conquer international markets.

Firsthand Insights from Salesforce Connections 2019

The third week of June marked the annual Salesforce Connections, a 3-day event centered on building potent customer experiences using the Salesforce platform. It was the perfect timing since one week before, we announced our integration with Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud — a partnership that allows Salesforce Cloud clients to access Contentsquare insights in an enriched eCommerce management experience.

Besides running our own booth and sharing our customer experience tips with digital leaders from every vertical, we soaked up a wealth of insights from trailblazers in retail and walked away with some learnings of our own.

Here is what we learned at Connections 2019.

Strategizing the Lifetime Value of Customers

Our first takeaway from the customer experience event is one of the most important things any e-tail player should know, and any business owner for that matter: the maintenance of the lifetime value of customers. Ecommerce platforms can particularly capitalize on this, having the digital space at the core of their communication and access to a wealth of data about the preferences and shopping habits of their audience. 

The lifetime value of customers, as its name suggests, refers to the continuous value that a select customer base can bring you. These customers are more than one-time buyers; rather they are those that have established something of a loyalty-based relationship with your brand, and as such are the best candidates for cross and upsells.

The idea behind lifetime customers involves positing a strong grip on customer retention — and beyond. The latter point of “beyond” refers to creating unique customer experiences set to distinguish you from other e-tailers, and by providing friction-free customer journeys across all channels. 

With personalization now one of the standards of a good customer experience, being able to deliver highly customized, intent-based experiences to your audience will go a long way in securing their loyalty. And we’re not simply talking of personalized emails or product recommendations — understanding the nuances of customer behavior and navigation patterns is key to creating journeys that speak to what your customers are trying to achieve and how they wish to go about it. 

Taking the 360° Approach to Customer Experience

There was also much talk about how marketing tactics can best benefit from a 360-degree approach, i.e., one that adds value for customers in every channel and at every touchpoint. 

Consumers today expect to integrate multiple digital — and offline — touchpoints into their shopping routine. This omnichannel approach gives brands access to more consumer behavior data than ever before, and digital leaders have already been leveraging this wealth of data to fine-tune the experience for their most profitable segments.

Brands today cannot be successful unless they understand what is engaging your customers and where they’re struggling. You can begin this on digital, since some aspects of digital experience (DX) can be transitioned into other marketing channels — even the nondigital variety. For example, some images perform better than others; some copy engages better than others. You can measure it on digital first before going forward.

We set up shop at Salesforce Connections 2019.


Automating the Digital Experience

Customer expectations of a streamlined experience have pushed brands to experiment with automated solutions across channels. Implementing automation in transmission strategies (think MailChimp and other mass email platforms, social media and text messages) has been the dominating  automation technique and has helped brands deliver individualized messaging to consumers. 

But aside from automation that facilitates content transmissions brands are also investing in tools to automate processes, such as conversational bots that guide navigation and replicate a level of customer service and guidance more often found in-store.

And the impact of automation is not just client-facing. As the volume of customer behavioral data increases, so does a brand’s capacity to predict behavioral patterns and UX performance trends.

This ties into the idea of artificial intelligence (AI), where machines can take automatic actions based on their own programming, rather than that of human command. AI can extend to the analytics space, granting you crucial alerts on customer behavior deviations or unusual happenings on your site. 

Creating an Optimal Customer Experience

Marketers and ecommerce professionals should always be on the lookout for methods to deliver an exceptional customer experience. While you can’t read your customers’ minds, you can always theorize their intentions with concentrated behavioral data. Customers are communicating with your brand with every digital interaction — analyzing their journeys and in-page behavior is the best way to learn what they are trying to achieve and what is preventing them from completing an experience or transaction. 

Aside from our learnings from Connections, we want to point out that we don’t only boast about building fantastic customer experiences; experience runs deep in our blood. During Connections, we brought out our friends from GoPro, whose bold, unique approach to digital content creation is a true inspiration. If you didn’t get a chance to pick up one of our “Golden Tickets” and chat with our team of UX-perts, don’t forget we’re always on hand to answer your customer experience questions!

Father’s Day Campaigns: What Over 100 Million Sessions Reveal About Gifting Behavior for Dads

Father’s Day is fast approaching, with only a few days left to buy something to show Dad you care, come June 16th. That means Father’s Day campaigns were in full swing from mid-May until these last few days. Much like with Mother’s Day campaigns, we’ve been keeping track of what retailers are doing to boost sales ahead of the special day.

To understand digital gift-buying for dads, we analyzed the behavior of customers interacting with Father’s Day campaigns, including father-themed slideshows, carousels and banners. We included 100 million visitor sessions and 500 million pages in our research, collating behavioral data over the course of four weeks. We focused on campaigns in the apparel, technology, cosmetics and jewelry (particularly watches) fields.

Low Attractiveness on Father’s Day Campaigns

The first conclusion we drew from our analysis is that — sadly for dads — Father’s Day campaigns are less attractive to consumers that Mother’s Day promotions.

Category pages for Father’s Day products, for example, have a significantly lower reach rate than their Mother’s Day counterparts both on desktop (-71%) and mobile (-50%).

Consumers are also much less likely to click on a Father’s Day slideshow than on a Mother’s Day slideshow, judging by the 37% lower click rate. And even if they do click, they’re simply not as willing to make a purchase for their fathers as they are for their moms. In fact, the conversion rate for Father’s Day campaigns slideshows is 68% lower than its Mother’s Day equivalent.

And for retailers running Father’s Day campaigns, the reach rate for these special category pages is 96% lower than the average category page reach rate on desktop and 93% lower on mobile. Meaning, for many consumers, it’s business as usual around Father’s Day.

So how can retailers drum up more interest around these campaigns? Well, with Mother’s Day Campaigns the firm favorite among consumers, why not remind customers shopping for their moms that Father’s Day is just around the corner? You could also offer promo codes for both events jointly, so that the two celebrations can support each other, retail-wise.

Positive Impact on Conversions from Father’s Day Campaigns

But it’s not all doom and gloom. While they’re not commanding as much interest as  Mother’s Day Campaigns, Father’s Day category pages perform pretty well when it comes to conversions. Pages showcasing gifts for dads recorded an average 7.08% conversion rate on desktop — that’s 77% higher than regular category pages. And it’s the same story on mobile, with a 78% higher conversion rate for these special events pages.

Mother’s Day category pages did not perform quite as well compared to regular pages, driving 26% fewer conversions on desktop, and a mere 4% conversion increase on mobile.

There are a few things brands can do to capitalize on this high conversion potential and further optimize the conversion rate of their category pages. Implementing helpful, accurate filters will help shorten the journey to the product. Providing reassurance messaging around fast delivery and shipping options will remove further hesitation from the purchase journey. And ensuring the promo code is easy to submit at checkout adds even more value to the experience and will make your customers happy.

List Pages Cannibalizing Products Pages for a Quick Buy Effect

Desktop visitors spend 51% more time on Father’s Day category pages than on regular category pages. Mobile visitors also linger on these pages, but only 14% more than they do on regular category pages. What’s interesting though is that, despite spending more time on these pages, visitors are also more likely to choose the quick-buy option — 7% more interactions with this feature on desktop, and 10% more on mobile, versus regular category pages.

The scroll rate on Father’s Day pages is 17% lower than on Mother’s Day pages — both on mobile and desktop. And on desktop the activity rate on Father’s Day category pages is 13% lower than on their Mother’s Day counterparts.

What does this tell us? That customers are less inclined to interact with these pages and favor quick paths to purchase. A lengthy stay on these pages suggests these quick-buy options don’t always meet consumer standards.

Adding reassurance elements in the quick buy pop-up along with product and shipping info will cut out unnecessary steps for determined shoppers. Making filters highly visible and helpful will also appeal to rushed consumers as will optimizing the search bar so it displays shortcuts to your Father’s Day gift pages. And finally, simplifying the checkout and adding a guest checkout option will go a long way to converting consumers who simply don’t have the time to sign up for an account or retrieve a lost password.

Visitors Spend Less on Father’s Day Gifts

At the end of the day, we know the question on everyone’s lips: who do consumers spend more on — their dads or their moms? Painful as it may be to hear for some, our analysis of cart averages shows people are more generous when it comes to their mothers.

Father’s Day carts are lower than the average cart by 19% on desktop. The trend is reversed on mobile, but only by a mere 1.16% increase. Comparatively, the average Mother’s Day cart is 84% higher than the average cart on desktop and 63% higher on mobile.

One way to up revenue per buyer is to offer gift sets with higher price tags and a bigger value for customers. These are great ways to inspire slightly less interested customers, by suggesting bundles and gift sets they might not have thought about themselves.

Seizing the Potential of Father’s Day Campaigns

A side by side comparison reveals that, overall, Mother’s Day campaigns perform better than Father’s Day campaigns, save for a few metrics. However, fret not, as the holiday celebrating dads still comes with a wealth of potential to boost your sales. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), the world’s most exhaustive retail association, shoppers are set to spend $16 billion on Father’s Day in 2019 —an all-time high for the holiday.

With the right strategy, underpinned by continuous monitoring of customer engagement and conversions, brands can maximize the potential of their Father’s Day campaigns. The addition of slideshows and banners with Father’s Day gifts on display can be gainful for businesses —the key is to give consumers what they want, i.e. quick gifting suggestions and easy ways to complete purchases.

Father’s Day 2020 is a whole year away, giving brands plenty of time to implement a data-driven strategy that will make customer-centric optimizations child’s play.

 

Contentsquare and Monetate Bridge Customer Experience Gap Between Brands and People

NEW YORK, LONDON & CANNES, France–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Contentsquare, a leading digital experience insights optimization platform today announced its partnership with Monetate, the worldwide leader in personalization for UX and customer experience optimization.

This strategic partnership enables global brands to deliver better personalization, experience stronger ROI and improve the lifetime value of customers. As for the 73% of consumers who feel brands fall short of expectations when delivering a personalized experience, this collaboration closes this gap.

“The partnership between Contentsquare and Monetate opens up exciting possibilities for brands who understand the retention and revenue potential of contextual personalization,” said Jonathan Cherki, CEO and Founder, Contentsquare. “By activating individualized journeys based on a visitor’s context and goals, brands will connect with customers in a way that sustains competitive advantage.”

International Brands like Clarks and Dreams Benefit from Contentsquare-Monetate Integration

With the majority of North America and UK consumers (63%) expecting personalized experiences,* the main challenge for brands is often a technical one. Our research shows data architecture emerged as a top challenge, preventing businesses from meeting or exceeding revenue goals. By combining Contentsquare’s unique ability to understand digital behavior and identify challenges and opportunities within a consumer’s online experience with Monetate’s programmatic personalization engine – the only solution bringing actionable insights into one platform – brands can save time and resources, recognize new revenue and build a lasting relationship with consumers.

Global footwear retailer Clarks and popular mattress retailer Dreams currently benefit from the Contentsquare-Monetate collaboration. For giant brands like Clarks, the technology implementation is a seamless, behind-the-scenes integration that advances how their ecommerce businesses operate to improve the online customer experience.

“Both the frequency of our testing and the success of our personalization efforts improved since adopting Contentsquare alongside Monetate. With Contentsquare, we can quickly identify sub-optimal visitor behavior and areas of focus,” said Andy Rayner, UX and CRO Manager at Dreams. “It’s refreshing to have a complementary suite of market-leading technologies which enhance each other.”

“Contentsquare plays a huge role in helping Clarks improve our checkout journey, reduce abandonment and increase on-site conversions,” said Andrew Brimble, Lead Performance Analyst, Clarks. “Like most ecommerce teams, a key challenge for us is knowing where to focus and prioritize, and with the Monetate integration, we’re able to see and take action on this faster.”

“Monetate’s collaboration with Contentsquare allows us to close the loop for brand marketers by allowing them to spot challenges and opportunities faster, act on them faster, and continuously evaluate their campaigns to make incremental gains in their marketing strategies,” said Stephen Collins, CEO, Monetate. “Together, we’re able to help consumer brands around the world overcome common speedbumps in realizing greater ROI and stronger customer relationships.”

Key Benefits for Brands & their Customer Experience

Monetate and Contentsquare have been strategic partners since 2018. In less than a year, dozens of retail, travel and hospitality brands across key markets in the Americas, Europe and APAC are improving their CX and bottom line through this collaboration.

To meet with Monetate and Contentsquare at Cannes 2019, visit: https://get.monetate.com/monetate-at-cannes-lions/

Community, Content and eCommerce Conversions: How GoPro’s Bold Brand Experience Strategy Paid Off

GoPro has been democratizing the way people capture and share life moments since 2002. As social media continues to turn everyone and their mother into a content creator, the brand has been making professional quality photography available to everyone with a video story to tell.

GoPro has gotten its camera in skateparks and oceans, on trails and slopes the world over, and to a large extent, its brand-building activities have organically been taken over by its active and energetic community of fans.

This community of thrill-seekers and storytellers is responsible for the tight link between GoPro’s product and the action-packed content and raw footage that has become synonymous with the brand. A lot of this content lives on the GoPro platform and is a key part of the GoPro.com visitor experience.

GoPro, Its UX and Direct-to-Consumer Sales Goals

A lifestyle-dedicated supplier of action cameras since 2002, GoPro isn’t just selling a camera — it’s promoting the ability to create lasting visual memories of your life adventures. As such, the site is much more than just a showcase of the product — it has to communicate the possibilities of the brand.

This is not to say that consumers merely head to the GoPro site to immerse themselves in the brand universe; they also make purchases and purchase decisions that may see them converting on partner vendor sites. As such, eCommerce conversions are a must for the brand.

Aside from the additional selling opportunities other marketplaces offer, they also bring forth the additional challenge of engaging customers and influencing their purchase decisions to favor the brand above its competitors.

For GoPro, onsite sales represent larger margins, of course, but more importantly, they afford the brand greater control of the customer experience within the GoPro.com ecosystem, and a richer opportunity to connect with its community of users.

For this reason, the brand has been actively focused on increasing its direct-to-consumer sales, while at the same time providing a meaningful experience to consumers who may go on to convert elsewhere.

 

The GoPro Hero7 is the seller’s flagship item and the brand was hoping it can boost eCommerce conversions.


Laying Out an Impactful Content Plan

To achieve the broad objective of increasing direct-to-customer sales, the brand began by focusing on its most heavily trafficked page (and primary revenue stream): the Hero7 camera product detail page.

The previous iteration of the page had been fairly simple, and the team felt it lacked the visual wow factor the brand has come to be known for. The team was keen to try out a new, media-rich version of the page that would give prospective customers a first-person view of the camera’s capabilities.

The challenge was: how to go bold with the content while keeping the customer journey friction free? How to know what content was encouraging engagement and conversions? And more to the point… how much content is too much content?

Gaining Visible Insights into the Customer Journey & Page Elements

To understand the content ROI of the Hero7 camera product page, the brand first dived into a broader depiction of analytics, that of the customer journey, to see how the visitors were arriving at the page.

After analyzing user paths, the client looked at the in-page behavior of the product page using Contentsquare’s zone-based heatmaps. Through this feature, the brand studied individual page elements to determine what exactly gave rise to conversions, hesitations and bounces.

Looking at unique metrics such as engagement rate and attractiveness rate as well as click rate, the team was able to understand how visitors consumed the content, which elements triggered interactions and which were UX dead-ends.

UX Implementations & Their Outcomes

Based on the data that our sunburst and behavioral metrics provided, GoPro confidently redesigned the product page by way of bulking it up with more content. This spurred a more customer-centric experience for the site visitors in that it focused on their unique consumer journeys and their personal interactions with distinct site elements.

Since videos received a lot of clicks and views, there was clearly a hunger for this kind of content and the client decided to capitalize on that.  

The redesign provided a unique customer experience that allured and engaged a stronger community of customers. This resulted in a whopping 80% increase in conversions. The mission of upping direct-to-customer sales was decidedly accomplished.

Unique metrics from Contentsquare overlaid on GoPro’s page elements helped foster UX decision-making.

Casting Unique Experiences for Unique Brands

The GoPro case shows that behavioral analytics don’t only serve as evidential data to use for making basic UX decisions. While we highlight that data keeps you aware of the goings on of your website and helps streamline the path to conversions, it can hold even more power.

As the GoPro case has proved, content holds a major position in the customer decision journey and in the UX space at large. It can act as the deciding factor behind a user’s ultimate hesitation — that of leaving, or that of converting.

For GoPro, content is paramount, as the content is intertwined with the product itself, and is a vehicle for articulating the brand’s uniqueness.

Whether or not your end goal and overall branding is content-heavy, you should always consult with behavioral data to see how your website is accessed and used. Data adds a safety net to your innovation strategy, and helps you better align your creative content with the needs and preferences of your customers and brand ambassadors.

Conversion Funnel: 9 Tips For Optimizing Your Conversion Rate

Conversion funnel, upper funnel, top of funnel… if your business is digital, you probably hear the word “funnel” several times a day.

If you thought you could ignore it, you’re wrong! Whether you’re selling goods or services on your site, or if you’re using email marketing to reach your audience, the conversion funnel is your friend.

In fact, it’s highly likely that your site has not one but several conversion funnels.

Indeed, all your prospects and customers will not have the same level of maturity and may follow very different paths to conversion.

More than a just a “straight-line” to a sale or subscription, the funnel is a great way to learn about your customers’ browsing patterns and about what the typical buyer decision journey looks like.

Being well-acquainted with its characteristics is a prerequisite for successful optimization and for staying ahead of the competition.

In the following post, we will review some key facts about the conversion funnel and take a closer look at the various stages that make it up.

We’ll keep the best for the end with 9 tips on how to optimize your conversion funnels for optimize your conversion rate. Ready? Let’s jump straight into the funnel.

Short definition of the Conversion funnel

The conversion funnel refers to the step-by-step process that potential customers go through, from initial awareness to final purchase. It outlines the stages in which prospects are converted into customers, helping businesses understand and optimize their marketing efforts to drive successful conversions and increase revenue.

What is the Conversion Funnel?

Spoiler alert: there are almost as many funnels as there are businesses.

The conversion funnel is comprised of the steps a visitor takes to get to a site from an ad or organic search, for example, all the way to a sale.

The funnel metaphor illustrates the gradual decrease of visitors traveling through your site from point A to point B.

The further down the funnel, the smaller the number of visitors, and remember — not all journeys will lead to a conversion. While you will probably have seen many illustrations of the funnel, it’s important to remember that there are almost as many funnels as there are businesses.

Hence the visualization for the funnel will depend on your business objective(s), which could be:

B2B, B2C and the Conversion Funnel

While the funnel is just as relevant for B2B as it is for B2C, it will look very different depending on whether you are targeting businesses or consumers.

For example, in B2C, the funnel will generally be simpler and shorter, because the purchase or subscription is often made on a whim or is at the very least highly subjective. A B2B conversion, however, will often be more pragmatic and business-driven. Building trust over time will therefore be crucial for B2B brands.

Conversion Funnel: What’s the Point?

2nd spoiler alert: there is no ideal conversion funnel — each objective and target has its own funnel.

Before you even get to conversion, the objective of the conversion funnel is to map out the various stages of the purchasing journey.

Once you have shed light on these stages, you can:

The differents stages of the Conversion Funnel

The conversion funnel consists of several stages that customers go through before making a purchase. These stages include:

It’s important to note that the conversion funnel can vary depending on the industry and business model. Understanding each stage allows businesses to tailor their marketing strategies and optimize the user experience for better conversion rates.

Tips to optimize your Conversion Funnel

Retail, tourism, banking, insurance, online gaming… different verticals will have radically different conversion funnels.

It is, however, possible to map out an outline that will be meaningful to more than one type of business. This outline generally follows four key stages. But don’t forget that, depending on their level of maturity, it is not unusual for a visitor to skip a step or two.

For example, they may decide to complete a purchase without seeking out further information because they are already familiar with a brand and or a product.

1. Inspire visitors

For this first step, answer the questions that your visitors might have and build awareness around your product and brand. Make sure that your landing page displays content that clearly addresses the value around your product or services. In short, be educational.

2. Turn visitors into prospects

This second stage is all about trust. Your objective should be both simple and complex: obtain your visitors’ contact information either to stay in touch or personalize the experience. This is what is known as lead nurturing.

A great way to expand your database is to be generous with your resources:

3. Converting prospects into a customer

The third stage is critical.

Your prospect is shopping around for the most competitive offer and the one best suited to their needs — up to you to stand out in a crowd.

You can do this by:

4. Loyalty building: from customer to brand ambassador

You thought conversion was the last step in the conversion funnel? Not quite. The next step is to turn regular customers into loyal, returning customers.

This has two challenges:

How to Optimize the Conversion Funnel in 9 Key Steps

Are you still with us? Great — you’ve just made it through Stage One in real time.

Because we really want to get you through to Stage 2, we’ve compiled 9 tips to optimize the sales funnel, whatever business you’re in.

1. Make sure the message is clear

This seems basic and yet… Whether it’s free or not, your offering is the basis of your conversion funnel(s). For example, Amazon rewards its most loyal customers with free or fast shipping and an extended catalog with its Prime offering.

Defining your brand offering also means highlighting unique events around it — for example, a members-only sales to launch the holiday shopping season.

2. Define your objectives

Without a final objective, it will be difficult to map the route from start to finish — from the entry point to the post-conversion follow-up. It’s crucial you determine the main purpose of the conversion funnel in order to optimize the various stages leading to the end goal.

This could be a sale, download, subscription, social share, etc…

3. Personas are good, mindsets are better.

The Mindset methodology goes beyond traditional personas to deeply understand your prospects’ state of mind at each stage of the funnel.

Why are they on your site (information, purchase, comparison)? What is the context of their browsing (on mobile, at work, in the subway, in-store)?

Understanding your visitors’ mindset is the first step to making them digitally happy and turning them into converting customers.

4. Build a strong content strategy.

Let’s not beat around the bush. Without relevant content, your strategy won’t hold up.

Give visitors resources that provide a concrete answer to their challenges:

In the travel industry, for example, inspirational content plays a key role in keeping visitors interested. This could mean suggesting itineraries for specific destinations, organizing trips around themes or offering advice about the best time to travel to a certain destination. In fact, 40% of all pages viewed* on travel sites contain inspirational content.

5. Streamline the UX

You might have the most attractive offer on the market and the most fascinating content, but your efforts won’t go far unless the user experience matches the expectations of your… visitors.

Here are a few common friction points you can fix as a matter of priority:

6. Boost site performance

It’s a well-known fact that load times can heavily impact conversions. A study published by Google in February 2018 indicates that visitors are 32% more likely to leave a site if the page takes between 1 and 3 seconds to load.

7. Create elements of reassurance

It’s a saturated market and your offer and prices are fairly close to that of your competitors… If this is the case, reassurance elements could make all the difference, especially when it comes to decision making.

Make sure information and prices are clear:

8. Determine entry points

As we’ve already mentioned, while objectives and targets are paramount factors of content creation it’s also important to build your strategy around the various channels that lead visitors to your website.  

These touchpoints should be top of your mind when ironing the creases out of your purchase funnel:

9. Test, test, test

You’ve put a lot of thought into your conversion funnel, your online content and your UX. Now what?

Now’s the time to analyze your traffic, bounce rate, click rate, session duration, conversions and exits at each stage of the funnel to identify any unanticipated obstacles to conversion. When armed with this knowledge, you can now test different variants of the funnel, modifying the copy, images, or repositioning CTAs, menus or customer reviews and seeing how this impacts conversions.

In conclusion,  whatever goods or services you are offering online, conversion funnels are crucial to turning prospects into hopefully, loyal customers.

But building a conversion funnel is not enough. You have to underpin these efforts with a smart segmentation strategy and analyze the behavior of customers as they move closer to the end goal.

Here at Contentsquare we’re obsessed with the way people interact with digital platforms, and that’s why we’ve created a solution that empowers teams to optimize each phase of the buyer decision journey and maximize conversions.

We also believe sharing is caring so pay attention to this blog for more UX advice. 🙂

* Source: from a Contentsquare study based on 188 006 236 browsing sessions captured between October 1 and December 31st 2017.

Datawords and Contentsquare Partner to Provide a 360-Degree Solution on Global Consumer Behavior

 

PARIS, France & NEW YORK, NY, May 16, 2019 Contentsquare, the leading digital experience optimization platform trusted by brands like GoPro, Sephora, Walmart and LVMH, and Datawords, the global leader in e-multicultural technologies that works with brands like L’Oréal, Audi, Benefit Cosmetics and Harry Winston, announced today a strategic partnership to provide their clients and prospects with a solution that combines culturally-relevant digital content with digital user experience (UX) insights to improve customer engagement and revenue around the world.

Today, consumers expect a more personalized experience wherever they are and however they connect. In order for premium brands to stay competitive, it’s vital that they understand and anticipate the unique expectations of customers across borders. With globalized UX insights, brands will have the power to understand how customers in different regions are interacting with their apps and websites, and therefore be able to quickly adapt to boost engagement and conversion.

 

Now brands can quickly understand how and why their visitor behavior varies by region and customize local experience to increase business across the board.

 

“We are always looking for innovative solutions that immediately help our clients improve their Digital Happiness Index scores and bottom line results,” said Jonathan Cherki, CEO and founder Contentsquare.  “With an increasing number of our clients operating across borders, we are partnering with Datawords to give these multi-nationals another advantage. Now brands can quickly understand how and why their visitor behavior varies by region and customize local experience to increase business across the board.”

Datawords’ multicultural understanding of the international digital landscape combined with Contentsquare’s leading expert knowledge in user experience will allow digital marketers to unlock the doors of new opportunities with international consumers.

 

Together, we will help international brands get a deeper understanding of their customers’ UX all over the world as well as adapt and streamline their digital campaigns to the local tech environment and cultural context.

 

We are thrilled to announce this new partnership with Contentsquare, a company with which we already share many values and clients in different sectors,” said Alexandre Crazover Co-founder of Datawords. “Together, we will help international brands get a deeper understanding of their customers’ UX all over the world as well as adapt and streamline their digital campaigns to the local tech environment and cultural context.

 

About Datawords

Created in 2000, Datawords combines the understanding of local cultures and technological expertise to implement the international strategies of major global brands on any digital platform. Headed by a team of co-founders, Datawords is today established in Europe, Asia and the USA. Datawords differentiates itself with e-multicultural technologies and the diverse backgrounds of its 600 employees who represent 50 nationalities and more than 60 languages. Datawords recorded a $75m turnover in 2018. Vanksen, 87seconds and Digiprod are also part of the Datawords Group.
More info on www.datawords.com and on LinkedIn.