Culture eats strategy for breakfast, said management theorist Peter Drucker. And it doesn’t happen on its own. Creating an outstanding employee experience is an ongoing job. In 2019, we doubled the size of our team — growing from 300 to 600 people. We grew in diversity and locations, with more than 38 nationalities represented across our offices. We recruited hundreds of new hires and integrated two acquisitions comprising hugely talented teams.

Our employee Net Promoter Score is currently at a healthy 11 (for scale, an eNPS greater than 10 is good and one greater than 50 is amazing) — this makes us 1) very happy and 2) committed to pull all the stops to keep our team engaged and happy. As we head into a new decade and continue to grow our team, we are staying true to our core values and finding new ways to bring them to life in our employee experience.

Building a culture of transparency and accountability

We’ve worked hard to build visibility and transparency at Contentsquare. Our shared goals are highly visible, and we have regular department and team-wide check-ins to see where we stand, what’s working well and what’s not. All employees set quarterly goals and we trust they are doing their best to meet their objectives and will readily share any hurdles they face. That’s why in 2020 we’ve introduced greater flexibility around the way we work because we care more about results than hours worked, where we work, or how many holidays we take. This led us to rethink our approach to working from home and to implement unlimited vacation days in the US to replicate the success of this model in our Tel Aviv office. 

Investing in personal growth

We believe that if our employees grow, the company will grow. We’re fully committed to investing in the career development of each member of our team. The CS Space Academy portal we launched this year is a one-stop-shop for our employees’ internal training needs. We’re a very international team with increasing opportunities to work from a new country. We have people choosing to transfer to another office every month, and recently we organized ten moves, including UK to France, Tel Aviv to New York, etc. We’re on the cusp of launching a new Learning & Development strategy, and we have big plans afoot to further grow our Peer-to-Peer learning programs, because we believe in our internal expertise, knowledge sharing and co-development. We also started a brand new onboarding program called Rocket Days, where we gather 10 to 20 newbies a month in our Paris office for a few days of training and French immersion! We’ve also kicked off an internal management mentorship track.

Energizing our team and realizing impact

Most of all, we want our team members to be excited about coming to work. About the ambition of our vision and product roadmap. About the impact each team member can have. That’s why we encourage contributions, involvement, ownership and ideas. In fact, our employees truly drive our innovation agenda — every year we host a company-wide Hackathon and the winning projects are included in the company roadmap. We’re very proud of our company culture and of the work our local culture crews do to keep things fun, unexpected and lively. And even though we’ve grown significantly, we still think it’s important for everyone to come together once a year at our annual WorldWide KickOff. This event highlights our commitment to transparency, as it’s the opportunity to align everyone around our strategy and recognize the terrific contributions of all our employees. Think 600 people in the countryside, two hours north of Paris, for three days…

What matters to our employees matters to us

We want to become more socially accountable, and we’re investing in several initiatives to help get us there. We’ve had several employee-led efforts to introduce sustainable practices, including the CS Green tree-planting initiative, which was a winning Hackathon 2019 project and our Culture Crew-led volunteer days. Our customer and prospective customer community expressed an interest in discussing the advancement of women in ecommerce so we’ve created new forums to do just that with more than 100 attendees at our London event last week.

One team = shared success

Everyone on the team is part of the Contentsquare adventure and we recognize that the success of our company relies on each and every one of our employees. That’s why we’ve announced that in 2020, we’ll be giving every full-time employee stock options.

In short, we’ve set ourselves some ambitious goals but we believe the experience of working towards them is just as important as achieving them. We think employee engagement starts with listening to the team, which is why we have regular surveys, daily direct discussions, monthly Let’s Talk employee sessions and, for (the few shy folks) our anonymous online question box. The growth we’ve experienced in the last couple of years has been tremendous and strengthened our organizational culture no end, and we know our best developments are still to come. Stay tuned!

Last year’s annual team retreat was already off the charts, but this year’s Worldwide Kickoff exceeded our wildest expectations. First off, this commencement was double the size of last year’s (580 people!), coalescing workers old and new, including those from our vitalizing acquisition of 2019.

Our lively lot metaphorically set sail to the company’s country of origin: France. After briefly staying at the very first Contentsquare office (in Paris), we sojourned on the Lac d’Ailette, in the heart of the French countryside to the northeast of Paris.

Secondly, we stayed true to our work ethic of working hard and playing hard, with jam-packed days of games and parties, balanced by meetings and workshops. Lastly, WWKO 2020 was a memorable event; for some, it was a fresh dive into the world of Contentsquare, for others, it was a chance to reconnect with the growing force that is our team.

We spoke with our team members from across the globe to get their perspective on this year’s kickoff.

Worldwide Kickoff 2020: Best Moments & Other Reflections

“The 2020 WWKO was amazing, the atmosphere of our close to 600 employees arriving from all countries was outstanding! I am sure we managed to provide them with the full update on where the company is, how we ended 2019 and our plans for 2020 and the years ahead.”
– Shlomi Hagai, Global CFO, Israel

“Kickoff was a really cool opportunity to get the US, French, and Israeli support team members together in the same room for the first time.”
– Steven Rayl, Support Engineer, Customer Support, US West Coast

“This was my first year at the Contentsquare WWKO and it was insane, very well organised you can tell how much hard work had been put in to get it put together. I have never experienced anything like the hype and camaraderie on the first day. It makes you very proud to work for a company that is doing great things but still cares and looks after the employees.” –
– Daniella Sykes, Sales Development Representative, UK

“My favorite moment was when we saw the brand video about the teams during the keynote presentation. It was so impressive, it gave me thrills. You really feel you’re part of one family. It’s so important because it’s part of our DNA.”
– Julien Crevel, Customer Success Manager, Paris

“WWKO 2020 was a great way to connect with team members that you Slack every day but don’t get to see in person. The same way that I love meeting clients in person so that they feel understood and heard, I really enjoyed meeting and seeing the rest of the global team during our team breakouts.”
– Monique Fan, Product Experience Manager, New York

“WWKO 2020 was a great opportunity to finally meet in person a lot of the people I’ve been interacting with from the different teams and locales.
– Sergei Shenderovich, Senior Technical Solution Architect in Sales Excellence, Israel

CEO Jonathan Cherki and CFO Shlomi Hagai were all smiles as they took the stage at WWKO 2020

“My favorite moment in WWKO 2020  has got to be riding the inflatable unicorn in the ball pit… my 6-year-old self came back out and had a blast! On a more serious note, it was great to hear about the company’s vision and where we’re headed, especially sinceI’m new to the business.
– Louise Duseigneur, Customer Success Manager, UK

“WWKO 2020 is, with Hackathon, definitely one of the highlights of the year for me. It somehow managed to keep a small startup atmosphere while constantly improving the level and quality of the event throughout the years.
– Antoine Auffret, Lead Customer Success Manager, Paris

“This WWKO 2020 was definitely one of my top three kickoffs. I’m so glad to see that after 8 years at Contentsquare, we are able to go beyond ourselves and make it even better!
– Fanny Pourcenoux, Head of Global Design, Paris

“My first WWKO at Contentsquare, and I am blown away! I’ve been to kickoff events with some of the biggest SaaS companies in the US, and they don’t even come close to capturing the energy and connection at the Contentsquare WWKO.”
– Derek Webb, VP New Business East Coast in Sales North America, New York

Some of our team members striking poses during a WWKO 2020 party.

“On the heels of what we’ve done last year with the two acquisitions and amazing growth, I think this WWKO 2020 contributed to building trust, the vision of the company, sharing enthusiasm, encouraging communication, and increasing collaboration.”
– Joaquim De Sa Alves, Chief Financial Officer, Paris

“Overall it was a very fulfilling experience interacting with teams across the organization and “visualizing” who is who and the organizational structure. Another would be the Customer panel sharing insights into how they are using and benefiting from Contentsquare.”
– Jace Dicker, Sales Director in Sales North America, US East Coast, New Business North America – West

“This was my 3rd WWKO and easily the best one yet. We upped the ante in every aspect; the content, the strategy, the presenters, the client involvement, the location, the atmosphere, the parties, the food…?!”
– Gareth Drabble, Head of Customer Success, Northern Europe, UK

“This WWKO has been just great! It truly embraced our values of team-building and enthusiasm, bringing together people from around the world, who have worked hard and proven their value to the business for an entire year, to have fun and build memories together during these wild 3 days.”
– Alessandro Boschi, Inside Sales Executive – Italian Market, Paris

Pierre Casanova, our Chief Revenue Officer delivers a speech to all attendees of the Kickoff.

“The first day of WWKO 2020 was also my first day at Contentsquare. To me, it was incredible to see how the company is sticking together, how each individual is following the same goal (to make Contentsquare great) and how transparent and honest the management team is with regards to the current situation and vision of Contentsquare.”
– Benjamin Gruber, Sales Executive in Sales Europe + ROW, Denmark

“Those three days of kickoff were awesome. Lots of great announcements and reflections to celebrate our common successes and ambitions. The parties were just crazy, with a ton of epic costumes and people full of energy and enthusiasm. It was impressive to see so many people from different cultures and countries, often meeting for the first time, working, chilling and having fun as one.”
– Fanny Rousell, Innovation Project Manager in Product, Paris

“This Kickoff was an amazing experience which started from booking half of the plane, and flying all together – the journey to the venue itself was an exciting experience since our drive from the office took 3.5 hours. The venue looked great, with stunning views, a cool countryside atmosphere and stunning sunsets.”
– Daniel Kanevsky, DevOps Engineer in R&D, Israel

“I joined the company back in June 2019, so this was my first WWKO. It was a great experience for many reasons. It gave me the chance to get to know my London colleagues better, but also connect with people across the organization, especially the people in SDR from different regions. I really found the presentations interesting and motivational — to see how the company is doing, and what to look forward to in the future!”
– Gabriel Andersson, Inside Sales Intern Nordics, UK

“ The WWKO was a brilliant and rare opportunity to spend time with employees from all around the world, build relationships that cross oceans and help us work together as one giant team — we are incredibly fortunate to be part of such a global and diverse organization and that deserves to be celebrated!”
– Kirsty Champion, Customer Success Manager, UK

“I’ve been attending kickoffs in 5 different companies almost every year for 20 years. The 2020 WWKO at Contentsquare was, without any doubt, the best I’ve ever attended. I’m a newbie and I really felt that I’m part of an awesome team in an amazing company. I loved Jon’s presentation about our history and where we come from.”
– Pierre Bancelin, Product Marketing Manager in Product, Paris

Celebrating some of the winners of our WWKO Yearly Awards

“The music, the words, the pictures have strengthened the sense of belonging to the Contentsquare family. We are big, unique, professional and the presentations were very clear at the same time. Best kickoff ever.”
– Frederic Kingue Johnson, VP Sales Western Europe, Paris

“The 2020 Kickoff was my first at Contentsquare but definitely not my last. Kickoff is not just a word. It’s a statement. It’s the embodiment of team building, team spirit and of course, lots of fun. It’s the perfect opportunity for the Contentsquare family to get together, share ideas, philosophies and opinions. It’s unique. it’s us.”
– Kristian Kramp, Business Development Representative in Sales Europe + ROW, UK

“My first day was January 13th, so being super new to the company I was pretty nervous and shy to meet not only my London office but the whole global team. Everybody I met made me feel incredibly welcomed from the beginning, and going to WWKO was a special way to feel a part of the team, very early on.”
– Matt Christie, UX/UI Designer in Product, UK

“It was my first kickoff and it was a big pleasure for me to be there. I was impatient to meet my colleagues from other countries.  My favorite moments were when we were all reunited in the big room for the presentation of 2019 by Jonathan Cherki.”
– Sonia Ghodbane Lamraoui, Senior Accountant in Finance, Paris

“It’s so mind-blowing to see that Contentsquare has doubled its size, while still keeping the on-fire spirit as usual.I loved the strategy presentation most showing realistically where we are at in the market, and the huge opportunities ahead in different continents. Love to contribute to that! Parties are always so crazy, and they were during our WWKO 2020.”
– Yefei Mao, Senior Product Manager, Paris

“I love attending the WWKO each year, as it’s an opportunity to meet people I regularly work with around the world, and reconnect with friends I made last year. My favorite moments were the unexpected ones – impromptu games sessions in our cottage. WWKO was also an important week to strengthen existing bonds and form new ones – talking face to face is much more natural then virtually, and can often uncover hidden opportunities to collaborate and help each other out.”
– Georgiana Hunter Cozens, CEM, UK

Our parties are always a blast, and the superstar one at the 2020 Kickoff was no exception.

After raising $120 million since 2017, and following the acquisitions of Clicktale and Pricing Assistant, digital experience analytics leader Contentsquare announced record results for the full year 2019. For its vision and accomplishments, the company has been named a 2020 BIG Innovation Award winner by the Business Intelligence Group.

“The digital experience analytics industry is growing at a rapid pace and Contentsquare is leading the way. Our company had tremendous growth this year including revenue, clients, geographic reach, employees, partnerships and product,” said Contentsquare CEO, Jonathan Cherki. “Customer feedback makes it clear we have the right strategy executed by the right people so we look forward to a bright 2020.”

Record Company Growth

With a mission to empower brands to create better web, mobile, and app experiences, Contentsquare grew annual recurring revenue nearly 200% during 2019. New and expanded clients include industry leaders across sectors such as BCG, Best Buy, Caixa Bank, Crocs, Deichmann, Dell, Europcar, Eurostar, Ferragamo, Orvis, Pizza Hut, RBS, T-Mobile, TomTom, Toyota, Tumi, Unilever, and many others. Contentsquare analyzes more than 9 trillion consumer interactions each day to provide its more than 600 enterprise clients worldwide with benchmarks and recommendations.

Companies worldwide are turning to Contentsquare for a new breed of analytics which surfaces digital behavior insights essential for improving customer journeys, increasing mobile conversions and increasing revenue. In 2019, more than 200 new customers joined the Contentsquare community and total usage of the platform increased nearly 300%. Contentsquare’s international sales grew at a brisk pace in 2019, with 40% of its business now in the United States and 50% in Europe, including strong adoption across France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Nordics. The company is growing faster than expected in Asia, particularly in Japan; Contentsquare is investing across the region in Australia, Singapore and China.

Contentsquare doubled its staff in the last year, growing the team from 300 to 600. The company plans to fill 200 positions this year. Contentsquare has 7 offices in Paris, Munich, London, New York, San Francisco, Tel Aviv and Tokyo. In line with its mission to create better experiences, the company continued to invest in its employee culture, adding new benefits and bringing all employees together for the annual offsite.

Ecosystem Integrations and Strategic Partnerships

Building a strong partner community is a key ingredient of Contentsquare’s strategy. The company’s partner program invites both services and technology partners to leverage the Contentsquare technology in order to create value for their customers. The company has built technology integrations with more than 100 software vendors, including some of the key players in its ecosystem such as Google, Adobe, Oracle, Medallia, Qualtrics, Tealium, Dynamic Yield, Usabilla, Monetate, Kameleoon, Qubit, ForeSee and OpinionLab. Contentsquare also announced in 2019 a business and technology integration with Salesforce. These seamless ecosystem integrations allow clients to leverage the power of Contentsquare data and insights to enhance the value of their commerce and marketing solutions. The company has also developed strategic partnerships with consultants and digital marketing solutions providers around the world, including WPP, Capgemini, Havas, Accenture, BCG, Wunderman, Dentsu Merkle and many others across Europe, the United States, LATAM, the Middle East and Asia. See them here.

Innovation with Artificial Intelligence, Privacy and Security Focus

To keep up with the needs of its clients, the company is constantly innovating and adding new modules to the platform. With 170 people in R&D and Product, Contentsquare is built to provide instant insights that go beyond what traditional “clickstream” analytics can show. A major new version of the platform debuted in 2019, integrating capabilities from its acquisitions such as Session Replay and featuring innovations such as Revenue Opportunities which estimates the financial impact of recommended modifications. The company also introduced the industry’s first turnkey holistic online experience score, the Digital Happiness Index.

When it comes to data privacy and security, Contentsquare continues to put its clients and their end users first, obtaining ISO 27001 certification with SOC 2 compliance completing in 2020. The company is also fully compliant with applicable data privacy laws such as EU GDPR and California CCPA.

In addition to the 2020 BIG Innovation Award, Contentsquare was named as a Next40 growth company by the French government and recognized by Global research firm Gartner, as a leader in the Customer Experience Digital Analytics field. Contentsquare CEO, Jonathan Cherki is participating in this year’s Davos World Economic Forum.

“Our ambition remains unchanged: empower brands to deliver better digital experiences. We are creating an intelligent brain inside the cloud that, thanks to our amazing clients, is improving the digital products and services that we all depend on every day. Our team constantly goes beyond traditional limits to achieve this vision. The results obtained over the last 12 months just strengthen our ambition to put the power of Contentsquare in the hands of every digital professional,” said Cherki.

We’re entering the most hectic time of the year again — and it’s not even (officially) the holiday season. That’s because the holiday season doesn’t formally start until the holy grail of retail events. We’re of course alluding to Black Friday, the crème de la crème for boosting revenue.

Our globally-extracted data attests to the weight this pre-holiday season event holds. (Have you seen the stampedes and clashes over commonplace items on this day?) With strong expectations of drawing in higher volumes of customers who purchase, now is the time to make sure your digital CX is spot on. 

We analyzed 110 million visitor sessions and inspected the performance of 600 million pages during the 2018 Black Friday season, stretching from November 11th to November 27th. 

Our data validates the expectations of higher sales and shopping carts surrounding these retail affairs (in most cases). There was also less site abandonment — in some countries. Let’s look at some of the key insights we gleaned from those numbers.

Big Wins in the USA — Cyber Monday Rules

Black Friday — historically a brick-and-mortar affair — is today a major digital sales event. In 2018, Black Friday digital sales reached record highs, generating $6.22 billion in revenue. Cyber Monday, as its name suggests, has always been about promotions in the digital space, i.e, eCommerce.

The United States followed this rationale, as its largest sales were chalked up to Cyber Monday last year. Black Friday sales saw a 17% hike in conversions, but Cyber Monday sales trounced these, with conversion increases of 60%.

And conversions weren’t the only thing on the rise — in the US, average carts increased during Black Friday by 12%. 

These heightened conversions were made possible owing to the checkout in particular. This was the case for not solely the US, but also in the UK. Let’s look at the stats we crunched on the checkout portion of the customer journey.

Adobe Stock, via Ivan

The Checkout: Higher Conversions, Lower Bounce Rates & Less Logins 

The conversion rate among visitors who reached the checkout funnel was 25% higher during both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Pre-holiday shoppers who reached the checkout appeared to be more inclined to go through all the steps necessary to complete their purchase, from selecting a product to entering their shipping address. 

The checkout page spurred lower bounce rates in both the US and UK. In the US, the checkout bounce rate went down by 28.3%, and in the UK, it decreased by 32%. 

In the US, the checkout bounce rate went slightly up again on Cyber Monday, but was still lower than the bounce rate in the lead-up to the holiday shopping weekend.

Despite the good performance of the checkout page, it also incurred some engagement issues. Retailers in the UK saw half the checkout logins during Black Friday, and in the US, the logging in rate was 61% lower.

It could be that Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers are in a rush to complete their purchase, or that they are already logged into their account. 

In any case, optimizing the checkout step with a quick and easy login process (think one-click, social login, etc) will only encourage more sign-ins. Encouraging guest users to create an account after they convert is another long term marketing opportunity.

Adobe Stock, Via AlexanderNovikov

The Search Bar & Category Pages: Higher Global Usage, Yet Higher Frustration 

In all the countries we analyzed, search bar usage saw a stark increase on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. US shoppers browsing retail tech sites drove a 31% increase to the click rate on the search bar. 

In the UK, specifically in the retail apparel sector, the search bar garnered a 3.16% click rate increase on Black Friday alone. The click rate rose to 10.01% on Cyber Monday. 

Visitors also browsed fewer category pages in general — 5% fewer in the US and 27% fewer in the UK — confirming the theory that, by the time Black Friday rolls around, shoppers have a good idea of what they’re looking for. 

The kickoff to holiday shopping season isn’t a time for idle window shopping, so brands should put their best offers on display well in advance of the big day.

Despite the seemingly good engagement coming from the click rate of the search bar, it can also be a source of frustration, as it drew in higher click recurrences across the board.

With an average of 2 clicks on the homepage search bar during Black Friday, the US felt the most acute wrath in high click recurrence. The UK followed suit, particularly in the fashion sector, where the search bar sustained a monumental 2,000% rise in click recurrence, from 0.08 to 1.78 clicks.

So while the search bar is a necessary element for possible conversions, it may not be very intuitive. It could be drawing up the wrong results or not pulling in products close to what users are typing in automatically.

Bad UX on the Add to Cart Button Globally

The search bar wasn’t the only element to incur a high click recurrence, as the add to cart button was racked by a similar fate. 

In France, particularly in the apparel sector, the add to cart button suffered a click recurrence increase of 5.85%.

It was slightly bigger in the UK apparel sector, having risen by 8%. Most notably, in the UK tech sector, it shot up by 62%.

The US was dealt the biggest blow on add to cart buttons, as they racked up a heaping 50% in click recurrence increases.

The root of this international UX trouble-maker could be error messages springing up when users clicked on the button, either due to a technical error or issues with inventory. 

The lessons to glean from this is to optimize the add to cart button and make sure you don’t run out of products. Pay special attention to best sellers and other popular items.

An Eclectic Set of Acquisition Sources

Traffic from emails was higher by a hulking 79% during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, compared with the prior period. 

Contrary to the US, UK brands received a higher-than-average visitor flow during this season. On Black Friday, organic traffic, or traffic from SEO, was 33% higher, and direct traffic also increased by 24%.

Cyber Monday did not follow suit in the UK. Instead, brands piqued the interest of incoming visitors through paid sources and CRM. Email-based traffic was 160% higher, while social media garnered a king-size 310% increase in traffic.

Whether your brand uses paid sources or goes the organic route, make sure your copy is compelling. Add your best deals to captivate more interest. 

And when creating SEA or paid social ads, make sure your landing pages are consistent with the messaging and offers mentioned in your ads. 

Capitalizing on Black Friday & Cyber Monday in 2019 & Beyond

As the drivers of major retail events, it is incumbent upon brands to create good experiences — digital and otherwise — to attract customers’ attention and most importantly, retain them. As our data shows, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are key forces for higher revenue streams and fewer bounces. However, there is plenty brands can do to improve the UX, reduce frustration, and engage higher add to carts.

For example, product and CTA findability carries a great deal of weight in user experience. As do elements that appear to be clickable, but turn out not to be. 

Read more about how The North Face leveraged granular customer data to optimize their gift guide. 

Luckily, you can refer to a slew of hard data, including industry benchmarks and see how to improve your digital experience for this year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But it doesn’t end here. 

You’ll need a continuous stream of data to refer to — and we’re not only referencing industry criteria. You’ll need to have a sturdy set of data on your customers’ behavior. That way, you can determine where customers are struggling and where they’re having a good UX. Once you’re equipped with this data, you can proactively make optimizations so that for your customers, Black Friday and the holiday season will truly be times of giving, i.e., buying.

According to Pew Research Center, 81% of Americans today own a smartphone, and mobile dependence is also on the rise. 

Emarketer predicts that by 2021, “mCommerce will account for 72.9% of the ecommerce market.” 

Like many other digital teams around the world, you may be scratching your head, wondering what you need to do to shrink the mobile gap for your business to see healthier conversion rates among your smartphone shoppers.

But instead of focusing exclusively at conversions, brands should take a closer look at their user journeys to gain an in-depth understanding of their customers’ behaviors.

Accessing this level of insight implies having the right tools and methodology, and in some cases, trading in basic or incomplete methods for next-gen solutions.

In this guide, we’ll explore why mobile conversions are having such a hard time catching up to desktop, and what metrics you can use in 2019 to make sense of (and correct) this discrepancy.

As ever, we’ll save the best for last with some concrete tips on how you can optimize your mobile or app experience today.

Let’s dive in!

Mobile Conversions vs. Desktop Conversions: What Gives?

Widespread mobile adoption means consumers now have the world at their fingertips. And yet, 37% of mobile sessions last less than one minute!

Evolving usage and the transformation of devices themselves have widened the gulf between desktop and mobile behavior. 

Even more so than on desktop, mobile browsing requires an intuitive, seamless navigation, fast loading times and a streamlined customer journey.

And yet many sites and apps are not conceived to meet the needs of this particular audience, which is often impulsive, impatient, and easily distracted.

The numbers speak for themselves.

Our study of 300 million mobile sessions shows that: 

• Smartphone sessions are 1.5 times shorter than sessions on any other device (37% of these sessions last less than a minute!)
• Mobile visitors spend 21% less time on the first page they land on. 
• A mobile visitor has a 50% chance of bouncing after 5 seconds. 

Hence the need to put aside preconceived ideas and to ask the right questions: 

• In what context are users browsing on mobile? At the office, during their lunch break? Waiting for the bus on their morning commute? Inside a mall? 
• What is your customers’ intent? Are they hoping to buy or simply looking for information? Are they trying to locate the nearest branch of your store? Are they seeking out customer reviews? 

Customer Experience in 2019: The Era of “Micro-Moments”

What if the objective of a browsing session was not, in fact, a purchase? 

You heard right. There are as many mobile browsing objectives as there are situations, or “micro-moments.” 

And yet it is possible to group these micro-moments into phases, each presenting their own set of challenges for brands: 

• I am discovering a product/service: can I get easy access to the information I need from the site? 
• I am heading to a store to make up my mind: how am I advised and encouraged online to continue my journey offline? 
• I’ve made my decision but I’m still missing some information: how does the site help solve my issues? Does it anticipate my questions? 
• I’m completing my purchase on mobile: is the checkout optimized for my immediate context/circumstances? 

Giving each of these situations proper consideration goes against some of the preconceived ideas of eCommerce such as: every visit should lead to a conversion. This is simply not the case.

What if the information or free services featured on your site also needed optimizing? Not to encourage an immediate conversion, but to generate long term value.

If you ignore these micro-moments and focus all your efforts on those visitors who have already decided to complete their purchase online, you risk missing out on many conversion opportunities in the long haul.

The Right Metrics for the Right Conclusions

We now know that the user journey on mobile is peppered with micro-moments that should be considered individually. 

But how do you shine a spotlight on these moments, which may vary greatly depending on your vertical, your positioning and your offering? 

A traditional site analysis, bolstered with A/B tests based on practical use cases (or sometimes even on intuition) may at first glance appear to be the perfect answer.

And while many businesses have relied on the numbers provided by these analyses for years, teams now have access to much more sophisticated UX analysis tools to understand the behavior and goals of their digital audience.

Basic metrics such as conversion rate, bounce rate, session duration and number of pageviews remain critical to understand user journeys.

But why stop there?

In the following paragraphs, we’ll look at four new metrics that can help teams better understand the nuances of customer behavior.

Click recurrence:
Click recurrence is the number of times a user clicks on a specific in-page element.

This metric is incredibly useful because it sheds light on user frustration, due to:

• Bugs and glitches
• A confusing CTA
• An unclear design that led the user to believe an element was clickable when it wasn’t

Activity rate:
The activity rate, a metric that measures the time spent interacting with specific in-page elements, is less frequently leveraged. 

And yet it’s much more useful to understand how long visitors spent trying to achieve a specific task than the time if took them to exit your site… 

Many businesses routinely monitor how long visitors stay on the pages of their site. This metric is useful to determine how helpful these pages are for visitors trying to fulfill a particular objective. 

Engagement rate:
The engagement rate measures the percentage of visitors who clicked after having hovered over a zone.

By analyzing the engagement rate on a CTA, you can understand the impact of each and every one of your changes (wording, positioning, etc) on conversions and other behaviors.

In short — a goldmine! 

Time before first click:
The time between the moment when the visitor lands on a page and clicks on an element is an extremely important value.

That’s when your visitor will form an impression, absorb the information you have provided and make a decision about their next action.

Time before first click can convey a lot of information about how a visitor feels about your site. 

For example, a short time before first click can indicate that visitors are distracted by certain elements or are being encouraged down the wrong path.

A long time before first click could indicate that the forms or features on a page are too complex to navigate, and are obstacles in the customer journey. 

How to Optimize the Mobile Experience to Increase Conversions?

Are you not convinced of the effectiveness of your landing pages? Now would be the time to take a closer look.

Our research shows that visitors who start their navigation on a product page spend less time on-site than those starting their journey on any other category of page. 

Presenting the right content at the most opportune moment is key if you want to enjoy a healthy conversion rate. 

The first thing to do is to make sure the content of your landing page is relevant to the message in your acquisition source (SEO, SEA, social, etc).

Here are some other good practices you can follow to maximize engagement on your landing pages.

Homepage

Challenge: is it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for?

Solutions :

• Simple and clear CTAs
• Crystal clear brand/product positioning
• Clear displays of the site’s main categories
• Reduction or riddance of moving slideshows,
• Fewer or no popups

Navigation

Challenge: is it easy for users to browse what interests them?

Solutions:

• Easy access to cart
• CTAs above the fold,
• Product availability (online and offline),
• Dynamic/accordion menus.

Conversions

Challenge: is the checkout process seamless?

Solutions for an improved cart:

• Make it easy for users to edit carts
• Allow users to remove items easily
• Suggest other relevant products after add-to-cart

Solutions for checkout:

• Offer secure payment options
• Enable guest checkout option
• Allow users to log in through social/email
• Include multiple payment options (Apple Pay, Google Pay…)
• Clearly label CTAs
• Enable “click and reserve” and “wish list” features
• Leverage mobile payment solutions

While our recommendations focus on specific use cases, an effective mobile optimization strategy requires continuous monitoring of all aspects of the customer experience.

Any improvements to the mobile experience need to keep up with the pace of usage, and with the real-time needs and expectations of your smartphone audience.

To help teams gain a complete understanding of their customers, and to pinpoint the obstacles or frustrations along the user journey, we’ve developed a unique set of metrics that measure customer engagement and interactions at every step of the journey.

Equipped with this level of customer intelligence, teams have everything they need to make winning CX decisions and remove friction from their mobile site and app.

If you’d like to know more about your customers, or if you want to see where they struggle on your site, give us a call and we’ll be happy to show you.

We’ll be happy to show you!

Travel UI design can be a hard nut to crack, especially when it comes to conversions. Our recent analysis of 2,100 Million visitor sessions across several verticals found that travel and tourism has one of the lowest mobile conversion rates of all sectors (0.90% average).

Desktop reigns over mobile within this sector on every performance metric, touting higher conversion rates: 2.90% vs 0.90% on mobile, and average cart values $1,860 vs. $1,790 on mobile.

Visitors spend almost double the amount of time on desktop as they do on mobile sites — 6 minutes 4 seconds on average, suggesting a less than optimized experience. The bounce rate appears to confirm this story, with a considerably higher rate of bounces on mobile than on desktop visitors bounce less, bearing a bounce rate of 39.80% (45.70% versus 39.80%). 

It is clear that even in this mobile-first age, booking an international flight or a train ticket on your smartphone phone may still be far from being user-friendly, let alone instinctive. Since travelers are largely defined by their mobility, developing headache-free solutions is paramount. Take advantage of the following tips to optimize your site for mobile users.

Make it Easy to Navigate Your Site

Whether you provide a multitude of transportation options or accommodation around the world, it’s imperative to optimize your website or app for booking on-the-go.

The best way to achieve this end is by ensuring your users can easily find what they are looking for on your site or app. 

That’s where the navigation menu comes in handy. By providing a clear navigation menu, visitors can quickly navigate the myriad of information and deals you have on offer. The more frustrated visitors become trying to navigate your site, the more likely they will bounce or exit without having converted.

Make sure that the most important parent categories are visible upon reaching the site. Avoid using ambiguous wording for navigation links so that hesitation times remain low, especially for featured content, offers, or features. Don’t leave users guessing what kind of content they’ll be directed to before clicking on something.

In addition to a clean navigation, use category or product pushes throughout the site in relevant areas so users don’t always have to rely on the global navigation (especially if it isn’t sticky to the page.) This can help keep your users engaged even after they’ve found what they’ve been looking for.                                          

An example of good travel UI design: On JetBlue’s homepage, the focus is solely on searching for flights, vacations, hotels, or cars. However, upon opening the menu, users are presented with key categories and CTAs dedicated to booking, managing, or exploring travel options. Categories and subcategories are written in large text and use helpful icons. The contrast in the background of the sub-categories makes it easier to read.

Create Seamless Experiences between Mobile, Web and Mobile Apps.

Many travel apps, especially those for booking transportation and accommodation, require specific functions and features that use the native capabilities of mobile phones.

For example, users are able to add their boarding passes, pull up their tickets or even track their baggage through mobile apps. Are travel brands replicating these essential features for their mobile websites? If not, they’re missing out on key mobile UX improvements. That’s because equipping users with access to the same types of features across platforms is key to providing a seamless travel UX. 

Surface Upsells and Cross-Sells When it’s Relevant

Users are easily overwhelmed when presented with too many options to choose from or multiple tasks to complete. Focusing the user on the most important task, such as booking a flight, is much harder when users are bombarded with a variety of extras or promotions they are encouraged to take advantage of. 

You wouldn’t put every checkout step on one page; the booking process should take a similar approach. It should be spread out across several steps to make it more easily digestible. 

The same goes for any upsells or cross-sells. Options should be progressively surfaced during different stages of the journey and in places where they are most relevant. 

When a flight is selected, the users are immediately provided an option to upgrade their seat. It clearly lists the benefits and price to upgrade. Bold colors that pop from the screen are used to indicate these special options.

That Does it for Travel UX 

Overall, your travel website should make any booking or research process as easy as possible. With mobile users increasingly on the move, any process should be made simple and easy to understand. That includes reimagining and optimizing crucial features so they take into account the context and goals of distinct audience segments. Learn what works best by studying your users’ behaviors and putting customer intelligence at the heart of your experience decisions. 

Halloween is creeping in on us as the October days tail off. But that doesn’t mean your user experience (UX) should be frightening. While frights are fun for haunted houses and other ghoulish festivities, they shouldn’t trickle into your customer experience. 

Alas, as our clients can attest, bad UX has reared its head like a zombie rearing out of a tomb many a time.

Scary. We know. That’s why we’ve compiled a horrifying list of poor UX design examples and ghastly digital experiences, right before Halloween, so you don’t scare off your potential customers. 

Even your most loyal customers will be put off by a bad digital experience. Sometimes, this bad UX arises out of something seemingly minor — a missing image, unclear text, an element located a little further down the fold… That’s what makes bad design particularly scary, in that what seems trivial and inconsequential gives rise to dire consequences.

But fear not! Our 5 scary examples of poor user experiences include very specific cases of how simple elements can go awry. Let’s see what scariness our clients underwent. (SPOILER ALERT: although these real-life UX horror stories seem grim, they all have a happy, data-driven ending). 

Unclear Filters Dampening Sales 

Clicks are great, right? So naturally, a hearty dosage of clicks should be a good thing, shouldn’t it? At face value, it may seem so, as when a zone or an element on a webpage receives a lot of clicks, it signifies ample interaction.

But as our client learned the hard way, click activity, or the study thereof, is not enough when UX is concerned. Studying clicks is crucial, don’t get us wrong. But it offers only a faint glimpse of the overall portrait of your UX.

Our client, a purveyor of men’s fashions, had recently developed a new mega menu. So when it recorded high click activity on the menu, this appeared to be nothing but positive. But it was bearing something sinister; the client noticed a major discrepancy on their site regarding attitudes towards clicks: when clicks increased, sales slumped. 

How was this possible? A UX analysis of in-page behavior presented some incongruity between the mega menu and search/category filters. While menu interactions were high, filter usage was stagnant. With unused filters, shoppers weren’t seeing all the products relevant to them, so sales took a tumble. It’s the stuff of nightmares.

Frightening Sliders Causing High Homepage Bounce Rate

Every mega menu — filled with panels, categories and text — ought to be complemented by visual elements. It would thereby seem natural to include sliders to accompany a mega menu, especially on the homepage, where such elements typically exist.

In the case of our beauty client, this placement wound up being a design fright, much to the detriment of their customers’ user experience, as the customers bounced.

Featuring a wealth of merchandise pushes, the homepage is the gateway to pique product awareness and interest for our client. But it was beset with high bounce rates. With a seemingly healthy swath of products on the homepage, the client was bewildered by what the UX culprit could be.

When analyzing the homepage, with special attention to the mega menu and sliders, the client found that the sliders were generating little to no engagement. Instead, these sliders overwhelmed the mega menu, leading many to bounce before engaging with either of these elements. Spooky.

Confusing Label on the Store Locator Causing Fewer Web-to-Store Visits

A store locator is a handy UI feature for click-and-mortar brands, especially those seeking to uplift web-to-store visits. After all, netizens won’t visit a physical store if they don’t know where it is. 

Instead of looking to Google, visitors ought to trust your brand enough to know that any useful location info exists on your own website. So when our client, a luxury click-and-mortar brand discovered high exits on their store locator, they were beside themselves.

Through granular analytics, they learned that for many site users, the store locator was the main reason behind their visit. Its button, however, had a ghastly label, one with even ghastlier results. It read “product search,” which befuddled users.

To the client, it appeared to be a nifty feature, an add-on to a traditional locator functionality. But it produced high hovers and low clicks, turning users away from the store locator, and as such, from completing their objective of a store visit. This worsened sales for items only available in-store. Creepers.

Disappearing Checkouts Angering Customers and Reducing Revenue

Conversions. Every brand wants them, but few products or even brands at large can trigger them. As such, users who reach the checkout — the final phase of both the customer journey and the sales funnel — signify a UX victory in itself.

Unfortunately, our retail apparel client was racked by bad UX on this holy grail of pages. Our VoC integration had gotten word of users’ ghostly experience when they reached the client’s checkout page.  In fact, a whopping 1,500 customers were afflicted by the ghostly checkout, leading them to complain via the call center, and as our UX analysis showed, leave the site.

When we say ghostly, we mean it. Behavioral analysis caught wind of the sudden onslaught of blank screens when users reached the checkout page. This, in turn, led users on the cusp of converting to abandon the checkout and the site, which reduced revenue for the clients. Yikes!

Simple Missing Image Impairing Conversion Rates

The above examples elucidated how site content led to a bad UX, with scary repercussions ensuing from each such case. But sometimes it’s the missing content that creates scary UX chaos.

In the case of our hospitality client, a missing image made all the difference for the conversion rates on their property pages. 

During a granular UX analysis, the client discovered high click rates on the links to property pages, i.e., pages with hotel offerings. The problem was, despite the clear interest in these hotel pages, users would abandon the site after landing on them.

This caused conversion rates to plummet and an addled brand, as it was unsure of the culprit behind the bad UX, since the images were crystal clear and the deals were showing.

A deeper UX analysis — one on journey analysis, revealed a major gap in the UX of these product pages. Visitors were looking for rooms that included a complimentary breakfast, commonplace in European hospitality, but were struggling to find this information. A simple image notifying free breakfast, even an icon of food would have prevented the loss of this conversion stream. The horror!

UX Analytics: The Bad UX Buster

Any brand can fall prey to scary bad UX. But bad UX need not uphold its reign of terror on your website; there is a solution.

This mighty antidote is granular user experience analytics, the kind of data that can back up the hidden trappings of customer frustration and its digital origins. Whether on its own or paired with VoC, granular data gives you indispensable knowledge on your UX.

The metrics and other capabilities (heatmaps with metric overlays, customer journey analysis) of these analytics do not merely point out the scary monsters causing a bad UX. They also deduce the changes and additions your website needs to rectify the issues caused by the poor UX and improve your sales figures. 

In short, a unique set of UX analytics combat these UX monsters so they can never rear their ugly heads again. Not even on Halloween.