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:

• Surface customer behavior insights easily through intuitive visualizations and behavioral anomaly detection, so you never miss an opportunity to improve the experience
• Identify and prioritize innovations to accelerate growth by better analyzing the performance and revenue potential of experiments, content, marketing and merchandising
• Troubleshoot user experience issues, connecting to voice-of-the-customer technology and alerting on abnormal changes in online behavior
• Quantify and predict the financial impact of potential actions you can take to improve experience
• Activate contextual personalization with third-party systems by aligning experiences with actual customer behavior rather than less meaningful attributes like demographics or gender

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.

Remember not so long ago, experts predicted that by 2020, customer experience (CX) would become the main differentiator for brands, outweighing both product and price? Well, we’ve arrived. The world has changed. Customers have changed. Has the way you understand and serve those customers really changed? Have you changed the way you work, how you invest, and how you define great experiences? 

According to CapGemini, while three-quarters of businesses today consider themselves to be customer-centric, only 30% of customers agree. So, what gives? 

The long and short of it is that delivering on customer expectations is proving harder than expected for brands. And with plummeting tolerance for a poor CX, and consumers less and less willing to give second chances, getting it wrong is a costly affair. 

And this isn’t a problem that acquisition alone can fix. First off, it’s more costly to attract new customers than to retain them. Second, it’s not a viable business strategy, because all evidence points to the fact that delivering a spot-on CX gives a business at least 3X the conversion rate and revenue growth over its competitors which provides an advantage no short-term spend or price drop can catch.

So how exactly do you go about tackling the growing CX crisis, and shrink the experience gap for a better, healthier digital future?

A Zero Waste Approach To Data

Too much of consumers’ online activity ends up unused — sure, this beauty brand knows it’s your birthday, but do they know how annoying it was to click on that lipstick three times and still not land on the product page? Do they know you want to see how it looks on your face with other makeup? Well, they certainly should.

Brands today have access to the tools they need to make every single second of digital activity (or inactivity) meaningful, and leverage this meaning to improve the experience for customers. Think of digital browsing as an insightful type of Voice of the Customer — every scroll, tap, hover and click tells the story of your customers’ intent and challenges, satisfaction and frustration. 

This ongoing digital feedback is fuel for insights that generate new opportunities, innovation and competitive advantage.

So if digital customer signals are all there for the understanding, why are so many businesses still only scratching the surface of the possibilities of data? And how can you drive maximum impact from customer data?

If you haven’t already, now is the time to adopt a zero-waste approach to data processing: collect only the data you need, analyze that data to extract relevant insights, and make it easy for everyone on the team to act on every piece of customer intelligence. 

Digital leaders who adhere to zero waste push their teams and their vendors to insist on solutions and services that go well beyond the confines of click stream analytics. They ensure transparent data collection and usage practices. They create data-driven cultures and processes, including analytics, as integral parts of business discussions and decisions rather than a separate function. 

At Contentsquare, everything we do starts with the data we collect, with the most comprehensive set of meaningful digital signals available. We take this responsibility seriously. We turn the trillions of behaviors into useful and quantifiable recommendations, making it easy for brands to act on those signals and give customers what they are loudly — even silently — asking for.

Balancing Troubleshooting With Innovation

Digital teams regularly use insights to improve their site and app experience in two ways: to troubleshoot issues (recover from errors fast) and grow through innovation (uncover hidden opportunities). 

Brands are always going to have to do all three, but in order to maintain their competitive advantage, they need to be able to tackle each of these strands as part of one holistic approach to experience-building. They need to quantify the strategic and numeric impact of each potential improvement, and prioritize the investments that will add up to the biggest total impact.

Because a reactive experience strategy won’t keep pace with the fluctuating nature of customer behavior, or the fluid essence of experience design. Just like your GPS is constantly learning from historic locations to predict future trajectories, experience builders should leverage behavioral data to anticipate customer mindsets and preferences.

Insights For All

Probably the biggest inhibitor to innovation and impact right now is the inability of teams to act, or act in time, on insights that matter. A lot of customer analyses happen separate from the experience execution owners. The limited access to analytics tools and the lag time inherent in the cycle of question-answer-follow up, question-answer creates lag time and inhibits customer understanding across teams.  

One thing we know about the outperformers is that they put the data directly into the hands of those tasked with ideating and executing the changes to the CX. Without widespread access to customer intelligence, there is no scalability and ultimately, no digital transformation.  

The ability to understand, and increasingly predict the needs, desires and preferences of digital audiences should belong to everyone who has a stake in CX — from acquisition marketers to content producers to eMerchanders to UX designers to product owners.  

Empowering teams around a common language for customer behavior and enabling them to watch firsthand as it evolves, is the only way to guarantee every one of them will be able to design the best possible experiences for your customers. 

The Experiences We Deserve

There are no best practices when it comes to experience — there is only what is best for your brand and for your customers right now. Because just as there isn’t one sole way of being convenient, there is no single gold standard for digital customer experience. What customers seek from you is different than what they seek from another company. You have a unique brand value to offer and your experience should reflect the specific relationship you want to cultivate with your customers.    

In addition, the perfect customer experience is not a monolithic thing — the perfect experience is the right experience for a given customer at a given time in a given context.  

People deserve experiences that reflect their nuances, that are reliably excellent, and that adapt to their fluid context and needs. They deserve experiences that recognize what they need from your company. If you keep that in mind, your team will be able to design experiences that are innovative rather than copycat and that is how you solve for the customer experience gap.

Turning customer experience into an advantage is now critical for business survival. You can step up and do things differently with the help of teams, partners and technology ready to support you. Together, if we listen to the digital signals our customers are sending and empower everyone to act them, we can close the CX gap, and unleash the potential of experience innovation to set up the digital future we really want. 

Where there’s a will, there’s a way!

With fashion month in full bloom in the world’s four most glamorous cities, retailers and luxury brands are capitalizing on the collective excitement for all things sartorial to showcase their new Fall/Winter looks online. And judging by our findings, consumers are more than ready to give their wardrobes a makeover and explore new styles…

In this article, we examine the effects of Fall/Winter apparel campaigns on digital customer behavior and their impact on revenue. 

Methodology 

To paint a clear picture of how US consumers respond to Fall/Winter collections campaigns, we analyzed data from 24 global fashion brands (including luxury and mainstream brands), focusing on their US sites. Our analysis runs through a month and a half worth of data, representing 98 million user sessions, spread out over 510 pages.

As part of our analysis, we compared the performance of Fall/Winter campaigns (or “new collections”) with that of the end-of-Summer 2019 campaigns (or “old collections”). 

Let’s learn more.

Fall/Winter 2019 Launches Increase Overall Revenue

The happy news for retailers is that the recently-launched Fall/Winter collections reaped larger average carts across all 3 devices. In fact, overall revenue was up 6.74% from the end of the summer campaigns, with the most impressive leap observed on tablet (+6.56%).

Conversion rates, however, did not follow the same upward trend — not on two device types, that is. . Desktop conversions on new fall collections stagnated at 2.19%, signaling no change in the conversion rate between the old and new collections. Tablet conversions lessened by 3%, further handing the victory torch to the end-of-summer collection in terms of conversion rates.

On the contrary, new collections on mobile outperformed old ones, with a 4.43% rise in conversions.

While the mobile conversion rate increase is slight, it nonetheless signals a significant opportunity for retailers, and a clear indication that consumers are willing to shop for new looks on their smartphone. Brands should thus not neglect capitalizing on their mobile UX. 

In fact, they should design with a mobile-first approach to digital. Aside from holding stock in revenue, mobile continued its high traffic trend. It was the most-trafficked device in BOTH old and new collections, hovering at around 72%, dwarfing desktop and tablet usage, which came in at 22.5% and 6%, respectively. 

Increased Acquisition Spend Leads to Higher Traffic

Now that we shined light on what is arguably the most important impact of Fashion Week, let’s veer into the beginning of the user journey: how visitors entered the websites we surveyed. 

According to our data, paid acquisition campaigns around the new collections paid off (pun intended). Brands primarily relied on paid sources to draw more users into Fall/Winter looks, including paid search campaigns (display ads) and paid social campaigns.

These paid acquisition campaigns resulted in traffic increases across all devices, with a whopping 289% growth in traffic from display ads and a sturdy 178% growth from paid social ads. It seems that if a brand is willing to put money behind ads for Winter/Fall fashions, customers are more than willing to click. 

Visitors Seek Fall/Winter Inspiration On The Homepage 

A high-level view of the digital customer behavior on the homepage reveals that, by the time the new collections roll in, visitors are eager to discover new trends and styles. 

The new styles drive a peak in customer interactions, with a higher click rate on the homepage slideshow (64% up from clicks on Summer items) and on the product tiles right below (+17%). 

There are fewer clicks on the search bar, which figures, as most consumers appear to be in a discovery/inspiration phase, accessing the new styles through the more visual, inspirational elements of the homepage. The click rate on the cart also goes down around the new season launch, corroborating the idea that consumers are primarily window-shopping.

It’s a good time for brands to make sure they’re getting the most ROI from the inspirational elements on the homepage, since the excitement for new season looks translates to heavier engagement with these areas of the site. Optimizing product pages to capitalize on this heightened interest is also key: if visitors are clicking on your Fall sweaters tile, make sure you follow through with a relevant selection of items and an easy path to conversion.

Inspirational Content Shouldn’t Slow Down The UX 

But with all this inspirational and visual content showcasing the season’s must-have items, some brands are running into speed issues.

On desktop, for example, homepage loading times were up 50% after the launch of the Fall/Winter collection — from 2.09 to 3.14 seconds. With a 4% increase on mobile, it seems brands have overall made some effort to keep load times down on smartphones.

It’s a delicate balance to achieve— on the one hand, you want to give consumers all the inspiration they are willing to consume, but not at the cost of stalling the customer journey. Analyzing customer interactions around each element of the page will help teams determine which content is truly driving conversions and which underperforming elements can be optimized, or altogether removed.

Fashion Week Campaigns Don’t Stimulate Store Locator Use 

Customers shopping for Fall looks seem less inclined to continue their journey offline than those looking for end-of-summer bargains. On mobile, the reach rate on the store locator was down -6% for consumers browsing the Fall/Winter collection. Desktop was hit the hardest with a -14% dip in the store locator reach rate.

It could be that with back-to-school, back-to-work, and general September busy-ness, many shoppers don’t have time to go to the stores. Then again, conversions are down too, so it could be that this is a time for window shopping and eyeing up what’s on offer for the months to come.

Optimizing New Collections Campaigns

The unveiling of Fall/Winter collections is a potent engagement driver, and consumers are not shy about clicking on ads and images to be educated about the new season’s looks. With higher engagement and revenue, these campaigns have plenty of potential. 

From post-click optimization to ongoing analysis of your key homepage areas, a granular read of your customers’ experience will uncover any areas of opportunity and help you refine underperforming content.

Remember to reduce your page loading times (long loading times are a major UX offense) and create seamless mobile experiences to reel in the most profit from this short-lived yet critical shopping season.

Your offering is clear. Your site is live. Your PR and ad campaigns are in full swing. You’re actively monitoring sales and subscriptions. But you’re not seeing the results you were hoping to see, and conversions are not growing fast enough. Have you considered landing page optimization to increase retention and achieve a healthier conversion rate?

For example, when a visitor clicks one of your ads, are they directed to a page that was built as an extension of that particular ad? That’s the idea behind landing pages. You probably already have some on your website. But are you sure they’re as impactful as they could be?

In the following post, we’ll try to help you master the delicate art of landing page creation and design by answering three key questions:

• When should you build a landing page?
• What is a working landing page strategy?
• How do you guarantee the success of your landing pages?

Let’s get started!

What is a landing page?

A landing page (or destination page) is a webpage intended to be part of a marketing or ad campaign. 

Its purpose is to encourage visitors who click on the link to convert.

It tends to be fairly simple and pragmatic.

Why the no-frills approach? Because the objective here is simply to grab your visitor’s attention and encourage them to take a course of action.

It’s different from traditional pages (like your FAQ pages or homepage) in that it is specially conceived for paid traffic (Google Adwords, Facebook Ads…).

Nonetheless, it can still appear in the organic results generated by search engines, even if it is, first and foremost, commercial.

How to improve your homepage

35+ actionable insights for getting the most out of your homepage.

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Why do you need landing pages?

We won’t keep you waiting any longer. The main objective of launching a landing page is to maximize conversions. While your homepage may be built around the needs and expectations of your largest audience, you can afford to focus your landing pages around a single message.

You might want to build a landing page to:

• Promote a service or product,
• Showcase a time-limited offer (sales, Black Friday, etc),
• ‘Reward’ visitors (white papers, coupons, etc.) to obtain qualified contacts

A landing page is part of a wider communications and marketing campaign designed to maximize its reach and impact.

It’s probably wise to start by analyzing the pages you currently have live. 

Landing pages are often associated with search engine or social media advertising campaigns, PR campaigns or events. Their impact often goes hand in hand with a simple design and clear messaging. 

By communicating a major piece of information in a relevant format, they minimize the risk of distraction often associated with traditional web pages and encourage a more focused consumption. It is, therefore crucial that your landing pages echo the messaging of the campaigns they are tied to.

Further reading: The Call to Action: 5 Tips to Increase Your Conversion Rate

Your landing pages should not be an afterthought

You now know what a landing page is, and it’s important for you to have them on your site. But there are still some things you need to know before launching the perfect landing page!

So before you put in a request to your marketing and UX teams, make sure to analyze your visitors’ behavior and understand their unique customer journeys on your site.

5 things to consider when building a landing page

1. What is the offering?

The very first step is to make sure you have a concrete offering for your visitors, whether that’s a product or service, a white paper or a discount.

The offer needs to be relevant to the needs of your client, wherever they are in the sales funnel. For example, if a customer is in the early stage of the buying phase, you may want to give them information about the various options available to them.

You may also want to wait until your visitor is further down the funnel to promote the actual products or services.

2. What is my objective?

Once you’re clear about what it is you’re offering, it’s time to figure out what the objective of your landing page is going to be. This objective will help you set conversion targets, which in turn will allow for efficient monitoring. 

There could be several objectives:

• Buying a product
• Subscribing to a newsletter
• Downloading resources
• Booking a spot at a conference
• Etc. 

3. Who are my competitors?

At this stage, you may want to make sure you have a pretty clear idea of the types of campaigns your competitors are already running. This might seem obvious but the whole point of good practices is they’re tried and tested! 

So, find out who your competitors are, determine the key to their success and see how you can leverage similar strategies to increase your own conversions.  

4. What are your targets?

Knowing your prospects and customers is not optional. The better you understand your visitors, their needs, habits and expectations, the better equipped you will be to respond to these needs in a relevant and impactful way.

This behavioral “mapping” will allow you to find the right words, to choose the best visuals and to create the most appropriate experience for your visitors’ segments. 

5. Where is my target audience coming from?

Where your visitors come from should not be taken lightly. In fact, this factor can even help guide the messaging and design of your landing page.

Indeed, your visitors’ browsing patterns and mindset may vary depending on the acquisition source — whether that’s Google, a Facebook page, an Instagram story or their Twitter feed.

Another obvious reality: the more landing pages you have, the higher the chance of generating leads, since each page can be customized for a specific audience. If this sounds like a lot of work, start with one page per campaign, and then try to add pages for specific segments.

11 key elements to include in your landing page

You now have everything you need to create a landing page that answers your visitors’ needs.

But wait, there’s more.

We’ve quizzed our UXperts in London, New-York, Paris and Tel Aviv to get their top tips on the subject of landing pages, and put together a list of 11 must-haves that will help you save time and increase opportunities for conversion. 

Let’s jump in. 

1. A winning header and subheader

While all the copy on your landing page is important, an awful lot is riding on the header and subheader.

One way to keep visitors engaged is to be clear and concise. You should be able to capture their attention and share the key product or service message in one sentence (no more than a dozen words).

The header and subheader must reflect the messaging of whatever link your visitors clicked on. Linkedin gets straight to the point with its “Get started with Linkedin ads” landing page.

Image source: Linkedin

2. Be clear about the value you add

Does your product have standout qualities? Can it solve several problems? 

You should enumerate those succinctly, in bullet points perhaps. Add icons for a visual representation of this added value. 

Hootsuite, for example, clearly lists the benefits of its new AI tool. 

Image source: Hootsuite 

3. Make sure your CTA is visible

“Without a clear Call to Action, you can kiss conversions goodbye.” – Contentsquare’s UX Team.

We won’t go on and on about the perfect CTA here because we already did that in another blog post. 🙂

But if we had to summarize:

• Visibility: make use of contrasting colors and be sure to locate your main CTA above the fold. Secondary CTAs should be smaller in size and further on down the page.
• Clarity: this might seem obvious but your CTA should look like… a CTA.
• Impact: the copy on your button should make visitors want to click. 

DesignCloud is good at distinguishing between its main CTA (Book a demo) and its secondary CTA (Get started).

4. Keep it simple

Here’s a piece of advice that never gets old. 

The search bar, menu, copy, forms — remember, every added in-page element could be a potential source of distraction. 

So be ready to kill your darlings, on the one hand, and showcase key elements, on the other. 

Appcues does a great job with a clear heading, listing three key benefits and having a clear CTA.

Image source: Appcues

5. Carefully curate your landing page visuals

Because an image is worth a thousand words, be picky when it comes to images. Try and stick to a simple and clean design, and don’t be afraid of empty space.

At the same time, don’t forget to optimize images so they don’t negatively affect the performance of your landing page. 

Monday.com’s landing page with interactive elements is the perfect example of how you can create a “fun” landing page without necessarily promoting an inherently “fun” product or service.

Image source: Monday.com

6. Feature video content on your landing pages

If you had to choose between reading a paragraph with several sentences or watching a very short video, what would you pick? 

It’s likely that, like most consumers, you’d opt for the second. 

Video remains one of the most powerful, highest-converting marketing mediums out there. Pinterest Business uses video to contextualize its product or service and to highlight what problems it can solve.

Image source: Pinterest 

7. Responsive design

Unless you’re working in a very niche industry, it’s to be expected that visitors will connect to your site via a variety of devices. 

Desktop, mobile, tablet — be sure to anticipate the various devices your visitors may be browsing on and ensure your CTA and header are visible without needing to scroll. Typeform’s landing page does this well, showing all key information above the fold on their mobile site.

Image source: Typeform

8. Peer reviews

It’s no secret that consumers are often swayed by peer reviews. 

Make sure to feature testimonials and leverage social proof to reassure visitors unfamiliar with your product or services or perhaps hesitant to convert.

You can include:

• customer reviews
• PR
• the number of clients
• list of noteworthy clients 
• etc.

Sustainable personal care brand Wild showcases its Trustpilot reviews above the fold on its new product landing page. 

Image source: Wild

9. Transparency over price

Consumers respond well to clear pricing.

If you can, try to display your costs clearly or direct prospects to an understandable rates table. And why not offer a free trial?

Shopify’s landing page is simple and has a clear CTA to signup for a free trial.

Image source: Shopify

10. What about SEO

A beautiful landing page is great. A landing page that comes up in search results is even better. 

Make sure your content is SEO-friendly, and be mindful of what your potential audience is searching for. Be sure to optimize:

• Paragraphs
• Headlines
• Titles
• Image descriptors
• Etc.

Not only does Semrush provide SEO tools, but its also a good example of how brands can utilize SEO to drive traffic to landing pages. 

Image source: Semrush

11. Remember to say Thank You

You did it. Your visitor subscribed to your newsletter or completed a purchase. But it’s not over yet. 

Don’t forget to always follow up with a “thank you” page after a user makes a conversion — any type of conversion. It’s the opportunity to reassure your customer about their choice and to once again, point out the value. 

Use this page to guide your visitor towards the next steps — you could, for example, direct them to useful resources such as blogs, reports, etc. 

The Thank You page is also a good opportunity for you to ask consumers to share their experiences on social media. 

Source: CXL

Image Source: CXL.com

Testing is the key to landing page optimization

While this guide is intended to give you some basic tools and advice to build the strongest possible landing page, it’s important to remember that there are as many approaches to landing page-building as businesses… and customers.

Just like your homepage and your product pages, your landing pages need to be carefully tested to surface any missed opportunity. 

Here at Contentsquare, we help brands maximize the impact they’re getting from testing by adding a critical layer of customer behavior understanding to their experiments through A/B testing. 

Interested in finding out how you can improve the performance of your landing pages?

We’ll be more than happy to show you how we can help your team deliver the perfect Customer Experience (CX) for every customer, every time.

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Customer Experience (CX) school is back in session and what better way to get ready for a new season of A+ experiences than by attending  Optimizely’s Opticon19?

Centered on digital experience optimization, the conference will feature experts in the fields of CX experimentation and personalization to help you create standout experiences and steer your business towards digital Nirvana.

Taking place on September 11-13th at the Marriott Marquis hotel in San Francisco, Opticon19 is not to be missed.

Optimizely & Contentsquare

We at Contentsquare are quite fond of events — we don’t just boast of experiments, we help create them. So you’re probably wondering why we’re going to this conference, given that we’re fresh off of our Digital Happiness Summer Roadshow, which hit up several states in a multi-day event.

Additionally, you’re probably wondering why we chose to team up with Optimizely, of all the brands hosting regional events surrounding the topic of UX.

Optimizely is one of our premier partners, delivering a world-class experimentation platform that equips digital teams with a scientific approach to optimizing digital experiences. 

Our integration with Optimizely adds a critical layer of behavioral understanding to experiments for faster results and a bigger lift in conversions. We tell brands why some tests and personalization campaigns win, and help digital teams fine-tune variations and focus experimentation efforts.

Optimizely seeks to help brands obtain the highest ROI based on its SaaS and so do we. You could say we are a partnership made in heaven and Opticon provides the perfect setting for us to show you this partnership in action. 

Opticon19: What to Expect

A three-day event, Opticon19 will kickstart the conference with a day of training on the 11th of September. 

The other two days will feature sessions, networking events and a conference party. You will get to hear from some of the best and brightest in the digital space, including leaders from IBM, Salesforce and Mailchimp.

Opticon19 will include an impressive roster of keynote speakers, including actor, investor and entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher, astronaut and engineer Dr. Mae Jemison, Optimizely’s CEO Jay Larson and a host of other digital leaders.

The event will present over 20 sessions across 3 “tracks” — critical areas to learn and optimize for a superb experience that helps raise conversions. The three tracks are those of: culture and growth, strategy and process and platform and technology, each highlighting crucial nuances for your brand to digitally outperform.

Contentsquare is hosting its own cocktail event at the Everdene Bar, a rooftop bar atop the Virgin Hotel in San Francisco.

Contentsquare: Our Own Event & Booth at Opticon19

We won’t be sitting idly at the conference and our experts will be on hand at Booth G11 in the Yerba Buena Ballroom to share tips and best practices on how to power up your experimentation strategy and improve your digital CX.

We’ll be happy to show you how some of our 600+ clients have successfully put our software to use and improved on a number of KPIs and show off the newly instituted benefits from our coalescence with Clicktale.

We’re also going to host our own surrounding event just before the conference, in tandem with our friends at Tealium. Join us for an evening of drinks, fare and networking at the Virgin Hotel’s Everdene Rooftop Bar, which comes with sweeping views of the city.

So swing on over to Opticon19, meet with us at our booth, party with us at Everdene and absorb all the enlightening, up-to-date trends on experimentation and having your brand the upper hand in digital experience.

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The luxury industry can be a tough puzzle to decode as far as user experience (UX) is concerned. The lavishness of the industry is clearly presented in the messaging of luxury brands. But underneath all that glitz and glamor lies a very serious issue for brands, one that ultimately affects their conversions: user experience on their digital platforms.

You’ve read correctly. Even the top dogs in luxury retail have to contend with UX optimization if they want to forge ahead. They have to engage their site visitors every bit as much as non-high-end industries like grocery, cosmetics, gaming and general fashion.

A lackluster digital experience on a luxury website will be reflected in the key performance indicators of luxury businesses. It will doom a business’s swath of KPIs with underperforming ROI.

So what can luxury brands do to improve their digital experience? We consulted with three influencers in the multi-faceted vertical of luxury to weigh in on how its UX can improve. From what ticks them off, to how brands can perfect their UX, we’ve garnered a bundle of insights from these three content creators in the luxury space.

Desktop or Mobile: What is the Luxury Device of Choice? 

User experience starts with the preferred mode of entry to a website; in this context it’s the device used. We spoke with three influencers in the luxury space: Patrick Van Negri, a content creator and social media influencer who operates his namesake website, which provides lifestyle content on fashion, travel, fitness and more. 

Aftab Pathan is an influencer in the luxury travel  space, who documents his traveling adventures on his website Fresh & Fearless. The site offers insight on the places he’s visited with suggestions on the activities and services of his sojourns.

Marie Olin runs Luxury Travel Diva, a website in which she shares her luxury travel adventures and advice on a bevy of worldwide destinations. Her trips span across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe and her posts review exclusive properties, along with covering travel tips for those seeking extraordinary experiences. 

In the ongoing digital battle of desktop versus mobile, each of our interviewees gave their own takes, demonstrating that even one’s own preference on device usage isn’t always so clear-cut. Patrick made the case for desktop, because of faster load times, a higher-resolution screen and better control of the experience. However, he admitted that he’s been increasingly shopping on his phone, shining light on the potential of mobile conversions, which are unambiguously low. According to our industry benchmark data, the luxury conversion rate on mobile sits at a meager 0.62%, despite its healthy traffic rate of 66%.

While Aftab generally prefers using his laptop, he admitted that a lot of his shopping was done on-the-go. “I don’t always get time to sit down to shop, so I often find myself scrolling through my favorite fashion apps in preparation for my next travels,” he told us. “Especially as I thrive on looking my best when traveling.”

Marie opts for desktop, proving that this device is still a strong digital contender when it comes to digital shopping, even in a mobile-first world. A computer, she reasoned, allows her to “blow up the photos and see the products more easily.” 

Courtesy of Patrick Van Negri

Pet Peeves in the CX of Luxury Retail Sites

When we asked our three influencers to name some of their pet peeves on luxury sites, their answers pointed mostly to a dissatisfaction with the products themselves; or more to the point, with how they are presented. For Patrick, one cause of annoyance is “making sure the size is correct and how the product feels once you have it in your hands.” 

So how can this be rectified through changes to the CX? Brands should offer clear photos of the product in clear lighting, so that once the customer has the product, it doesn’t fall outside their expectations. Making sure you add clear size and size comparator charts will also go a long way to reassuring visitors. And if your brand has a presence in more than one country, consider helping your customers navigate different sizing standards so they can easily find their fit. 

One of Marie’s biggest peeves is missing out on a bargain because her size has sold out. Notifying visitors of low stock is a good solution to this problem, as well as providing the option to be notified once a sold-out item is back in stock.

Patrick, like many other shoppers, hates “going back to the post office for a return or exchange.” This is another area where retailers can make a difference: a pain-free return policy is today a key component of a positive experience.

Aftab chimed in with a joke, referring to the obnoxious prices in luxury. But while one of the defining characteristics of luxury is that the prices are as exclusive as the products, it’s interesting to note that some brands are adopting a “pay what you want” strategy on certain products, giving customers greater control of the shopping experience.

In earnestness, he referred to the lack of diversity from certain luxury brands as worrisome. It seems that, when it comes to inclusive marketing and campaign diversity, many luxury companies are lagging behind more mainstream retailers.

Courtesy of Fresh and Fearless

Courtesy of Fresh and Fearless

The Digital Luxury Experience, Best Sites & Apps

But while they had great insights to share on the experience gap, our three interviewees also pointed out that some luxury brands are really getting it right. Patrick singled out GQ, Farfetch, Nordstrom, and Dolce & Gabbana. “I love the style inspiration, user experience, and the info I get prior to my purchase,” he said.

That’s why digital teams ought to consider the weight of the content when designing their UX, as it can resonate with users so much so that it leads to a purchase. The purpose of content, after all, is to not only grab attention /entertain but to establish connections that resonate. 

It’s not surprising then that brands invest heavily in content to boost ecommerce conversions. But according to our data, 68% of luxury content never gets viewed, putting tremendous pressure on the  32% of content visitors are interacting with.

Aftab credits Mr. Porter as his ultimate luxury app and his partiality for this brand highlights the need for and positive outcomes of a mobile-first approach to UX. “It gives me all the latest luxury fashion essentials right to my phone, without needing to browse through various sites and spend hours finding my size,” Aftab said. “It stands out to me because it provides luxury fashion tailored towards men, and there aren’t many online stores like them, or with an app,” he concluded.

For Marie, a seamless navigation, one that shortens the path to product, takes center stage in her choosing of favorite luxury site, as well as the ease of making returns and quick order reception. “I love net-a-porter.com, she said. “It has some great designers, the site is easy to navigate, orders are sent quickly and no quibble returns. Aesthetically pleasing too!”

Courtesy of Patrick Van Negri

The UX of Luxury Travel 

The luxury space is not limited to luxury retail or shopping; plenty of brands render niche offerings that obviously deal with the digital space. Since Aftab and Marie are both laser-focused on the travel niche in the luxury space, we grilled them on this subsector.

We begin with their more high level takes on luxury travel: what the best parts of it are. Aftab praised personalized service and luxurious interiors, doubling down on the former by noting the importance of “attentive service” in one sentence. 

And personalization today is an omnichannel affair — consumers want tailored experiences both off and online. Behavioral analytics allow brands to deploy a deeper personalization strategy than ever before, one that takes into account more than just demographic data and enables meaningful experiences tied to context and intent. 

Additionally, he raved about “my one true love, branded bathroom amenities. Nothing makes me happier!” Providers in luxury hospitality take note.

Marie also ascribes the scenery as the highlight of luxury travel, along with other particular likings. “My favorite aspects of luxury travel are obviously luxurious surroundings but just as important are the staff,” she said. “Luxury travelers want to have everything running smoothly and have competent and polite staff. A Butler is my favorite treat in a top hotel.”

Zeroing in on the UX of luxury travel itself, Aftab cites the need for wish list function for a smoother, more convenient UX.

“I would like to see more travel sites allowing you to save packages and bookings in the form of a “wish list”, the same way you can on many fashion sites. Sometimes you don’t want to book the flight, hotel or both instantly, and want to revisit it at a later date (and for the same price!)”

Whether it’s to avoid longer bookings or to have easy access for a later session, the use of a wish list is crucial, and as we’ve seen in previous research, the converting power of the wish list is proven.

Marie goes for a more general rule of thumb for luxury sites that look to improve their UX, stating the necessity for user-friendliness. She pointed to the specific examples of attaining this: by providing up-to-date information with appealing and functional (clickable) links.

Luxury travel providers, especially those in hospitality, should also make specific types of hotels or other sojourning options readily visible, perhaps with left-hand navigation categories. This is because finding them can be as struggle for users — inevitably leading to their frustration. 

Aftab attests to this: “I’m very specific about the kind of hotels I choose for my travels. Often enough, I find it difficult to find a five-star hotel that fits my “vibe”, which is suitably located, and includes all the amenities/services I require during the dates I want to travel,” he said, following with a jest — “I know, total first world problems!” 

Marie’s biggest frustration in booking luxury travel stays is difficulty in navigation, particularly when there’s “too many boxes to tick!”  Additionally, a poor UX for her involves the insistence on certain dates of travel. She suggests luxury travel sites show an entire month of prices per one page for both convenience and even affordability. This is so — in her own words — “I can go on the cheapest date! Luxury travelers like a good deal.”

Courtesy of Luxury Fashion Diva

Courtesy of Luxury Fashion Diva

Advice for Luxury eCommerce Retailers and Content Creators

Lastly, we sought out advice from these influencers for luxury retailers in the digital space and content creators alike. 

According to Patrick, creativity and originality are at the helm of an optimized user experience. Creators need to be able to find their own voice and style and steer clear of duplicating what other content creators do; if they don’t avoid the latter, it’ll stunt the growth of their brand (whether that’s a business or their own media presence).

“Just like any other content creators, stay authentic because that is the only asset you have. Also, do not try to copy what other influencers are doing. You will look cheap and unoriginal, and your potential to grow is non-existent,” he said.

He closes off with: “Innovate and do not be afraid to try new things and concepts, even if they scare you and the risk is too big. That is the only way to stand out and get ahead of your competition.”

“Don’t ever start content creation for the sake of earning money or getting “famous”, it defeats the objective of being a genuine, and sought-after content creator,” he said. “And when it gets tough, or you lose inspiration, remind yourself why you started. Let your creativity run wild!”

Alongside focusing on community-building and common interests, Aftab also believes in the need to have a unique offering, whether that be in sales or content:

“If I had to share one piece of advice, it would be to be completely true to yourself. It’s easy to get consumed with what other luxury content creators are doing around you, but the main thing is that you create content that fits your brand, aura and truly allows your personality to shine through.” 

As they deal with the subject of luxury, Marie suggests that content creators in the luxury space make the content itself luxurious. “Make the content really luxurious, stand out from the ‘ordinary’, be extraordinary.”

Furthermore, she advises on the need to appeal to the target market, meaning those most apt to buy, or at least take interest in the luxury space.  “Someone recently commented that my website was luxury and not for ‘ordinary’ people. This made me happy because I aim to target the luxury market!”

Closing off, she proposes that luxury travel sites ought not forget the older travel market. “Remember the older travel market!  We are the people with time and money to spend on luxury trips. Older travelers want luxurious Business Class flights, top class accommodation,” she said.

Aggregators’ laser focus on digital experience has given them an edge when it comes to online conversion. They leverage data to understand how their users behave and buy online, which enables them to A/B test improvements quickly and efficiently to drive sales.

Identifying purchasing trends allows them to spot up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, react to changing customer expectations, and tailor products to meet user needs. Insurers would do well to imitate. 50% of Online Insurance in Europe is sold via aggregators.

Ecosystems Will Account For 30% Of Global Revenues By 2025

7 of the 10 largest companies by market capitalization are ecosystems – Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Tencent. 

Ecosystems’ one main focus is to have customer-centric digital activity. Their expansion puts insurance brands at risk. Products like Amazon Protect, focused on device insurance, are the first examples of a potentially untapped market for these tech giants.

Insuretech

9 In 10 Insurers Fear Losing Part Of Their Business to Fintechs

Pressure on margins, loss of market share and information security are among the top concerns for insurers, but according to PwC, a large proportion also see opportunity. Many think new technologies can offer reduced costs through automation, improved customer retention and a differentiated service.

Insurers

71% Of Consumers Surveyed Used Some Form Of Digital Research Before Buying Insurance

To compete, insurers must adopt the same customer-first mentality as digital leaders like Amazon. Namely: A relentless focus on finding and eliminating friction, particularly for key journeys like account registration, troubleshooting and account management.

Many companies fail to improve customer journeys because discovering what customers value isn’t easy. Translating that understanding into operational performance improvements is even harder, requiring deep customer insight, robust analytics, and a detailed model of key customer journeys, with ownership across functions and end-to-end management. 

Digital channels like web and app offer important opportunities to analyze customer interactions and uncover friction. This data is essential to creating services that don’t just work, but delight customers.

Insurance Trends

Traffic per Device: Traffic shifted from desktop to mobile in 2019 – a 48% increase from 2018.

Number of Pages Seen: Visitors seem to consume more content per page, with an increase in the session time (+35% on desktop) but a decrease in the number of pages viewed on average (-6% on desktop).

Percentage of Content That Is Never Seen: Despite visitors consuming more content per page, the percentage of content that is never seen increased.

Average Page Views For A Lead Generation Visit: Visitors consume lots of content before converting whether this is informational content or the form pages themselves.

The Problem

Insight into customer behavior trends is crucial to building an online experience to rival the Amazons of the world. Yet insurance brands still frequently struggle to understand the “why” behind customer behavior, and many still use tools like Google Analytics to get answers. While these tools effectively answer the “what” – ie. which pages are being viewed and for how long, this information doesn’t help when attempting to understand visitor behavior at scale. 

Many rely on session replay tools to try and uncover user experience issues, but few have the time to gain effective insight. Others rely on analysts to answer their on-site questions. This too requires significant time and manual effort, and puts a strain on analyst resources. 

The “Tag, Wait and Learn” methodology is outdated. It relies on having to guess where issues might be ahead of time, leaving businesses “not knowing what they don’t know.”

A Solution?

UX Analytics helps organizations make faster, smarter decisions by giving each team the means to answer their own optimization questions. With these tools, they can access aggregated data on visitor behavior; robust enough to underpin data-driven decisions, and presented in a way that even non-analysts can understand. Contentsquare’s platform is purpose-built to be easy to use, accessible to a large number of users, and not to sit siloed within Analytics teams.

According to our Digital Experience Report on insurance Bank of America has 30 people trained on the tool to measure the impact of every experience, and piece of content. 

Find out how Contentsquare’s solutions can help insurance brands by accessing “The Digital Experience Report – Insurance” below