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

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

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

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

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

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

9 trillion reasons to use Contentsquare

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Disruption Coming To The Auto Sector? We Quizzed Two Experts For Their Viewpoints

The end of dealerships, online vehicle shopping, pure players, smart cars… Has the auto sector been speeding down the digital transformation highway? We quizzed two digital auto experts to find out how disruptive the auto industry is about to get…

Our first interview is with Jérôme Jean, Digital & Regional Marketing Manager of Toyota in France. Interviewed by David Robin, Associate Director of Colombus Consulting, we learned about the automotive landscape in the digital space.

Colombus Consulting: Let’s dive straight in. What does a successful customer experience (CX) in the auto sector look like?

Jérôme Jean: It’s pretty simple: it’s an experience that is completely linear — from the search engine or website all the way to the dealership visit. These last few years, Toyota has focused heavily on digital to improve the customer journey. 

It was crucial for auto manufacturers, whose distribution network has not evolved in 30 years, to become more agile. The aim was to offer a renewed buying experience with a mainly digital pre-sale journey.

We thought about how we positioned our brand and our vehicles at every touchpoint. What experience do we want our customers to have in the dealership? And today we have a new challenge: customers show up very well informed and really challenge our salespeople…

Particularly nowadays, competition is so fierce…

Yes, that’s true of other manufacturers’ eCommerce platforms, but also with pure players who have a radically different approach. There is also one thing no competitor can get around: having actual dealerships so that customers can have a live experience and “feel” the product. 

So does that mean the auto sector is moving from hardware to software..?

Yes, absolutely. First of all because you need to add a digital dimension to the dealership experience, which requires having one single database — in our case, Salesforce.

The software is going to continue to evolve fast with smart cars. Tomorrow, diagnosis, preventive interventions, vehicle upgrades — all of those will happen remotely. The auto sector’s approach to marketing will shift increasingly to mobile. We will be able to offer new apps and services to make our customers’ lives easier. Manufacturers will finally connect with their customers on a daily basis.

“The auto sector’s approach to marketing will shift increasingly to mobile.”


Where are we at with online sales today?

The online retail market is gaining traction. All manufacturers, especially in England and Scandinavia, have been testing online sales of new vehicles. 2020 will be a pivotal year with the emergence of online sales platforms. The real question is: what is being sold? Selling new vehicles is the Holy Grail… except that today, the used vehicle market is much more mature. But will it work? I don’t think that online sales will dominate the market or spell the end of dealerships. In my opinion, digital will be one extra sales channel that will hopefully allow us to market to a younger customer base.

 

Next, our own Geoffrey Vion interviewed Brice Renvoizé, Digital & Experience Manager at SEAT Groupe Volkswagen on marketing, data and CX in the automotive sector.

Contentsquare: How did SEAT restructure to meet the digital challenges of a fast-evolving sector?

Brice Renvoizé: We transformed our digital marketing strategy 2 years ago, with a restructuring of teams based on data and customer experience. Today, our Influence division is responsible for increasing brand awareness and our Digital Customer Experience division is in charge of optimizing the customer journey. The customer journey is changing fast and we’re seeing a decline in dealership visits.

Has this changed your mission at all?

Our objective today is to prove the business value of digital, and to drive more traffic to our dealerships, which is where 100% of our sales still happen. Drive to Store is our main KPI and all our digital innovation takes into account the dealerships as a key part of the buyer journey.

The SEAT ID is an example of how our digital strategy is evolving. This unique client/prospect identifier will remove all barriers between our digital interfaces, dealerships and smart cars. It guarantees a friction-free experience in both the physical and digital world — it’s the ability to keep members in our ecosystem, which includes offering new services.

New services?

Yes, third-party services (music streaming, paying for gas…) are included in a monthly payment thanks to the connectivity revolution in the auto sector. 

On the product side, we’ve already disrupted the status quo by launching a “no strings attached” car. A Netflix-type subscription where you can return/exchange your car and change your mileage — all this in an easy way, with no fees. Every last obstacle in the experience has been removed! With this level of service, we’re answering the needs of the new generation, who is more interested in usage than ownership.

Will people be buying their car online anytime soon?

No, not yet. We all still need contact with a product that remains a unique type of purchase. But digital can simplify the process: online deals with financing offers, estimates for a trade-in…

So it’s not the end of dealerships just yet… But how do they connect to digital?

We can remove the barriers between the two. We measure showroom visits that come from mobile traffic. The information shared during the experience on seat.fr. makes it easier for the vendor to understand the client. 

The experience both online and offline still needs to improve thanks to considerable personalization. The key to personalization will be customer ID and data.  

Can you describe your data strategy?

It helps us save on acquisition and focus instead on conversions. How? By personalizing messages depending on profiles and segments, by way of optimizing touchpoints to increase conversions. Ads we will go even further with the SEAT ID and the smart car. Today, data is used for marketing, tomorrow it will be used for business and service. 

 

Hero image credit: SergeyBitos, Adobe Stock

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

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

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

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

Don’t place text on cluttered areas of images

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

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

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

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

Don’t automate carousels

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

Here is a great example from Ralph Lauren:

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

Hero Image Via: Rawpixel.com, Adobe Stock

Why Digital Experience Analytics Matters

Analytics have made a splash in the realm of marketing, to say the least. The need for data is more apparent than ever, as more brands are marketing themselves under the coveted category of “data-driven.” In reality, they are not becoming data-driven fast enough, if at all. 

We can vouch for the fact that data trumps intuition, but aside from arming yourself with industry data that relates to your vertical for market research, it’s also vital to compile site data on your own site visitors. That’s where digital experience analytics solution enters the picture, and it does so in a substantial way. 

Most web analytics platforms show how a websites is accessed, along with some of the activity that occurs on it. Granular digital experience analytics takes this further, in a concerted effort to measure digital customer experience (CX). As such, it offers acute data sets, visualizations and metrics that evaluate and quantify how visitors interact with the individual elements of your website. But not all user experience analytics solutions provide the same granularity of data.  

Most analytics platforms do not take user insights a step further, so they do not give you a more granular performance review of your site or app, meaning that you wouldn’t be able to comprehend how each in-page element is used and how it contributes to a broad set of KPIs. 

In short, user experience analytics is a functionality designed to give you insights into visitors’ user experience. It’s incredibly important for both marketers, web developers and designers alike, as it dictates their strategy and implementations. But not all DX platforms offer the same capabilities.

So why exactly does digital experience analytics matter? Let’s find out.

Understanding Your Customers

If you don’t understand your customers, your website will show, leading to reduced activity, heightened bounces and poor conversion rates. Digital experience analytics allows you to segment your audience based on their behavior, and unlock a much deeper understanding of their needs and expectations.

From what visitors are trying to achieve and how they want to go about achieving it, to what causes frustration along their customer journey, analytics gives brands a nuanced read of these occurrences. Pure play brands are masters at leveraging this type of customer intelligence as they hyper-target their offerings to specific segments. With this approach, they are not attempting to be all things to all users, but are tapping into the minds of their most profitable segments, implementing high levels of customization.  

Behavioral analytics can highlight visitors’ distinctive behaviors on your website, such as where they are most engaged, where they click and how often, the frequency of their hovers on a particular part of a page, the time they spend per page or element and much more.

We recently helped, travel leader Pierre & Vacances identify customer preferences for targeted optimizations. After analyzing customer behavior on its holiday property search results page, the brand found that site visitors were interacting heavily with the “number of rooms” filter (it had a high click rate and a hearty dose of conversions).

However, this filter was lost among a wealth of other filtering options. Based on this intelligence, the brand placed the filter in the second position on the filter bar, making it easier for users to find it. 

The moral of their story is that once you’ve figured out through  DX analysis what your users’ precise intentions are, you can then go about improving your digital experience to allow them to seamlessly complete their intended tasks without incurring any frustration. 

Additionally, it’s interesting to learn about online behaviors of visitors in different regions of the world. As per our Global UX Map, a comprehensive report on the user behavior of visitors in 7 countries, we’ve found just that.

For example, we learned that visitors China are happy to engage with visuals, with a slideshow click rate of 5.5, so adding product images on your China site makes for a great UX. On the contrary, using a lot of visuals like slideshows is less well-received by visitors in the US and Italy, which have the respective click rates of 1.3 and 2.5 on the slideshow, the lowest of all the surveyed countries. 

In both of these cases, DX analytics has the prowess to empower digital teams with localizing knowledge that can assure a positive UX for global users. 

Why You Should Invest in Website Accessibility

Creating Data-Driven CX Decisions 

Digital experience analytics matter where website design is concerned, as it dictates what the experience will look like for visitors. If it doesn’t, chances are, your analytics platform isn’t very robust and offers little else aside from a traditional traffic analysis. 

A granular user experience analytics space empowers its users to make data-driven CX (customer experience) decisions, and if you couldn’t tell from this blog, CX is not something to ignore. It is critical for the sake of both acquisition and retention, especially the latter, which is important for maintaining a steady revenue stream.

With data providing multiple reference points to optimize your content, you can do so innovatively and confidently. An optimized CX will make it so that you can streamline your customer journeys and remove frustrations, the latter of which impedes conversions. It can also help you detect if there are any errors in the elements that yield conversions themselves, such as CTAs, form fields and buttons that signal making a purchase.

But it doesn’t end with conversion-bound elements. A deep experience analysis can identify a host of other faulty site elements which stir your site visitors into leaving. That’s where a data-driven analysis comes into play, finding pesky problems in the design and structure of your website that can have grim consequences on your CX.

A data-backed CX optimization plan acts as a security net for brands seeking to try new things on their sites. Perhaps there’s a trendy feature you want to try out or a new setup of a crucial site element. Delving into new implementations is a rocky road, but with data on your side, you’ll be informed as to what works and what doesn’t.

Furthermore, making data-driven decisions allows all team members to own business goals, measure the contribution of their revenue and quantify the ROI of the experience.

 

Making Headway in Conversions

After you’ve done your CX homework, testing what strategies work and keeping close tabs on how your website is used, you check to see the impact. Which ROI is more important than conversions? Most marketers would agree that conversions are of the utmost importance for a business if not one of the most important.

Aside from boosting conversions, digital experience analytics assists in all the steps leading up to conversions, as it visualizes user flows with customer journey mapping. Understanding how users navigate your site is the first marker of what needs to be improved, along with indicating what works and what drives interest among visitors.

As such, granular analytics provides the relevant data and metrics for CRO (conversion rate optimization). Optimizing conversions always starts with measuring the experience on your site and/or app. As for preserving retention, a chief business goal, digital experience insights will assure you know what works and what doesn’t — essentially giving you more knowledge into how to retain conversions by keeping hold of the same site visitors.

Getting The Most Out Of Digital Experience Insights 

Digital experience analytics carry weight with the entirety of your user experience, as it can quantify a host of user data: their interactions, hesitations, frustrations, etc. on your website. Because of this, it should be a top-priority implementation into your marketing plans. However, not all user experience platforms have the same built-in capabilities — particularly the actionable, full-picture data of all the goings-on of your website. 

For example, not all of such platforms analyze individual site elements and how they fare in traditional metrics, let alone more robust ones. So you should be selective when choosing your experience analytics software. Don’t forget: you ought to aim for retention over acquisition, as once your users visit your site and enjoy what they experience, the likelihood of them returning shoots up.

The Digital Happiness Summer Roadshow 2019

Summer is officially upon us and — never ones to skip a beat, we’re taking to the road to spread our UX-pertise far and wide. Our team of experts is hitting the road to a city near you to help improve your digital strategy to the max. Our roadshows take a results-oriented approach to digital experience, with a focus on Digital Happiness (which, by the way, you can measure). 

Why? Because we live in an age of experience, and brands today are competing on their ability to deliver experiences that meet (and exceed) the needs and expectations of their customers.

Disjointed experiences, counter-intuitive navigation, in-page frustration, a lack of transparency — a poor site experience is bad news for brands in a world where there are no second “digital” chances. On the other hand, seamless journeys, headache-free paths to conversion and value-adding content are the hallmarks of a successful customer experience. 

So — how exactly do you build standout digital experiences that keep visitors happy (and converting)? How can you make your site or app work harder for you? What tools can digital teams use to gauge customer bliss and encourage engagement? 

We’ll be discussing all this and more. But we don’t just speak on creating amazing experiences — we put our money where our mouth is —  we create them. 

So join us in one of four fabulous locations for insights, happy hour, networking and advice customized for your vertical.

Let’s take a look at what’s in store:

Digital Happiness Roadshow: Dates, Info & Why You Should Attend

Denver 

July 18th, 6:30 – 8:30 pm

The show in Denver (along with the one in Philadelphia) kicks off the Roadshow. We’re starting with a bang, with the show set for Mile High Spirits, a lounge best known for its live music and patio games. If the craft cocktails and light fare don’t fill you up as much as you’d like them to, you won’t even need to walk far, as food trucks line this trendy space. Also, if you love modern distillery and spirits, stay around for some info on how to snag a spot at their distillery tours.

Philadelphia

July 18th, 6:30 – 8:30 pm

In Philadelphia, our roadshow will take place in a historic meeting place — the Philidelphia Distillery, which is the state’s first spirit distillery since the end of prohibition. The meeting place itself was once a factory, a key marker during the state’s industrial revolution. The transformed the 13,00 square foot space was later transformed into a retail store, bar and tasting room. Come for the UX teachings. Stay for the spirit craftsmanship.

Atlanta

July 23rd, 6:30 – 8:30 pm

In Atlanta, our roadshow will leave you shouting from the rooftops — perhaps literally, as it’ll take place in SkyLounge, a world famous rooftop lounge and event space. Here you’ll get to enjoy craft cocktails and gander at incredible views of the ATL. The lounge sits atop the historic Glenn Hotel, situated in the heart of the Centennial Park District, known for being a hub for business and entertainment. There’s no better place to imbibe the sprightliness of the downtown district.

Austin

July 25th, 6:30 – 8:30 pm

We’re hosting our Austin roadshow at Maggie Mae’s, an iconic “bar” that screams Austin. As you can see, we use the word “bar” loosely, as the venue boasts over 15,000 square feet of event space, 7 bars, 3 stages and is steps away from major hotels. It’s anything but boring — the perfect space for a memorable UX lesson. 

In this iteration, we’re partnering with Brooks Bell, a provider of analytics, A/B testing and personalization consulting for enterprise brands. Like yours truly, this company helps with website optimization and has a unique approach to obtaining it.

See you there!

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.

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

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

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

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

GoPro Story

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

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

Enriched eCommerce

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

Empower the Entire Commerce Team

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

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

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

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