The following infographic by KISSmetrics and Conversion Rate Experts highlights one approach to webpage designs that works particularly well for SaaS (software-as-a-service) businesses and can be applied in other industries.
The below 9 steps are best practices for Web-page designs that can be used as guidelines to improve web effectiveness.
To better understand holiday shoppers and their attitudes about online tools and channels, LivePerson, a provider of real-time online intelligent engagement solutions, conducted its 2012 Holiday E-Commerce Survey.
The 500 respondents were over 18 years old and had shopped online at least twice in the previous three months.
Highlights of the findings about holiday shoppers:
What the above means for companies is that they have to increasingly invest on social and mobile (both mobile phones and tablets) platform with live chats functionalities to better engage customers.
Below is an infographic summarizing the survey findings.
Steve Olenski, in his article “Is Your Brand Trust Worthy?” pointed out that the issue of trust or lack thereof can stem from the actions of a given brand’s CEO as it pertains to social media.
A CEO survey conducted by BRANDfog revealed that:
The above shown the ever-growing importance and need for the senior management to use social media as a means to engage its customers and earn their trust in the process. Think of how Barak Obama uses social media!
Another study done by MediaBrix revealed that digital, social and mobile advertising appearing as content can be damaging to brand trust. From the survey:
Advertising that appear to be content can misled consumers and negatively impacted their perception of the brand being advertised. So DO NOT try to trick or mislead the consumer by hiding under the veil of content marketing.
Indeed, brands’ online content is just as important as their online presence and usually negative comments spread faster than positive word-of-mouth. Hence, marketers have to be extra cautious when navigating the Internet terrain.
In recent years, Augmented Reality (AR) has moved beyond sci-fi movies to become an incredible marketing tool for brands and retailers. The power of AR, particularly for marketers, is its ability to overlay computer-generated content on top of the real world environment. The mix of virtual and real world means that we can access digital data about specific products or services within our physical environment. This opens the door to a highly interactive user experience!
Turns out that in the near future, customers will be able to try on clothes and products at home with no shipping required. Augmented Reality (AR) technology will allow shoppers to virtually wear garments — smelling, hearing and feeling the fabric as if it were real.
Some companies are already using AR to transform online shopping or leveraging geolocational data to augment users’ real-world retail experiences with digital data (eg. instant data on pricing, reviews or special discounts). For instance, Ikea has added augmented reality to its 2013 catalog with new features that let consumers access films, interactive experience and photo galleries with their smartphones. Although augmented reality is still an emerging technology, it will completely change retail in the near future.
This article also features how 2 companies are using AR to market their products.
McKinsey iConsumer research that 50% of shoppers check their smart phones to compare prices or get product details while they’re shopping. More stunning is that 2/3 of them change their behavior based on what they learn from these checks. That means that 30+% of the retail economy is influenced by in-store price checks.While almost every retailer know that mobile shopping is a growing trend, few are attuned to how quickly this is happening. It’s clear to many of us that mobile is here to stay, and retailers need to deal with it.
More recently, I have also heard of brick & mortar retailers using mobile well. real-time geographic information enable retailers to interact with the on-the-go consumer at key decision points. For example, retailers can now send promotions or coupons to potential customers near them.
To ensure that their offers are most relevant, some retailers are even partnering with companies that have access to extensive consumer transaction data. For instance Visa, has enabled retailers such as the Gap to send messages to the mobile phones of opt-in customers when they scan a transaction near one of Gap’s stores. Gap can tailor the offer based on time of day, customer history, or other personalization methods. This capability allows it o reach their customers while they are on-the-go to stimulate a store visit and, ideally, an incremental purchase as well.
With these real time mobile interactions between customers and retailers, hardcopy flyers and coupons will soon be history.
I came across this interesting article: 10 Trends for Online Marketers in 2012 on Entrepreneur.com while surfing the net for project inspirations.
The article has listed the top 10 marketing trends, with advices to help you determine if the trend is “ready for takeoff” and worthy of your time and money now, or “still boarding” and better for you to just test out.
1. Deals and Rewards Ready for takeoff. This will be a year of bargain hunting because the economy is still recovering and consumers have more price-checking tools at their fingertips.
My thoughts: Agree, deals and discounts always appeal to customers. However, unless you are the low cost leader in the industry, you cannot rely on price competitiveness alone. On the other hand, rewarding loyal customers appropriately as part of relationship building can help you retain them and even engage them to be your brand advocates.
2. Mobile Pull Marketing Ready for takeoff. Mobile pull marketing means giving consumers ways to interact with your advertising over mobile devices, and pulling them closer to a purchase decision.
My thoughts: Agree. Putting too much information into an advertisement can confuse the customers. Rather, the more efficient way is to attach your product website or QC code to your advertisement so that customers can refer to them for more information and promotions.
3. Mobile Push Marketing Still boarding. Mobile push marketing means sending promotional messages through texts and voice calls. It’s still relatively expensive for small businesses to become bulk senders of texts and voice calls. Instead, invest in your email list. Emails are much less expensive than texts and can contain unlimited content.
My thoughts: Should be “Ready for takeoff”? Since the cost of gaining a new customer usually greatly exceeds the cost of retaining a customer (it is often stated that it costs five times as much to attract a new customer as maintaining one), marketers should invest in a database of customers’ contact list in order to send them regular updates via email or other preferred mode of communication. Already, customer mailing lists are commonplace and should be “Ready for takeoff”.
4. Three-Screen Marketing Still boarding. Besides the traditional advertisement on television screens, you can advertise on the portable tablet screen with emails, videos and social media, and advertise on the mobile phone screen using loyalty apps that track purchases or promotions that involve the phone at the physical point of sale.
My thoughts: Agree. This is of course assuming that your target customers use all these 3 screens. More importantly, marketers have to ensure that the messages sent across all 3 screens are consistent.
5. Local Online Marketing Ready for takeoff. Try some locally targeted ads in national publications in 2012 and make sure they contain locally relevant messages.
My thoughts: Agree. The struggle of Local vs. Global Marketing => Local Marketing is better. Marketing has to be tailored for the target audience in the language they understand and appropriate for the local culture.
6. Proximity Marketing Still boarding. Services such as ShopKick and Foursquare let people opt in to receive promotions on their mobile phones from nearby vendors.
My thoughts: Agree. Proximity-based marketing means that consumers will receive marketing information through their mobile devices when they are in the proximity. Hence, it is ideal for malls, department stores, retail outlets and locations with human traffic. Retailers can broadcast ads to mobile devices near their shops to distribute advertising digitally and efficiently. Furthermore, retailers can record all devices identified and messaged, and record which ads/messages are being accepted or rejected by shoppers. Data can be kept for review and future use, to improve advertising effectiveness. Although still uncommon, trials in proximity marketing could help prepare marketers to reach tech-savvy shoppers in the near future.
7. Social Earned Media Ready for takeoff. To get a positive review or referral, you have to earn it. That’s why it’s known as “social earned media.” Use a social-media monitoring tools such as Trackur or Google Alerts to find out what people are saying when they mention your company or products.
My thoughts: Agree. Customers tend to trust the content that other customers have posted on third parties websites such as TripAdvisor, Yelp and UrbanSpoon more than what marketers have posted on their company websites. Consequently, prompt management reply to negative comments posted on these sites is important for service recovery and to safeguard the company’s reputation. Research has shown that satisfaction with service recovery leads to a higher level of trust, positive word-of-mouth behavior and, to a lesser extent, the level of loyalty. Furthermore, outstanding recovery results in loyalty intentions which are more favorable than they would be had no failure occurred. This service recovery paradox means that a customer might be more satisfied with a company although they didn’t deliver on their first attempt than if they had delivered the service without errors, if the recovery action is perceived as very good. No doubt, social media is an effective platform to gather feedbacks and interact with customers. Companies should politely ask customers to rate and share opinions of their products/services and get involved in the conversation online.
8. Social CRM Ready for takeoff. A CRM (customer relationship management) database is usually used to track people’s purchasing behavior. But don’t forget that your customers share other information about their lives that you can monitor on social media sites.
My thoughts: Agree. With the widespread use of Internet, it is so much easier than before to “listen” to your customers and tailor your marketing plan to the latest trends in consumer behavior.
9. Globalization Still boarding. Language translation technology such as WordLens also is making it easier for people to read a website, email or advertisement in their own language.
My thoughts: Should be “Ready for takeoff”? One of the advantages of Internet Marketing is the ability to scale up and reach out to a global audience. People in any countries can easily search the marketing content intended for other countries anyway. The difference is that people in different countries have different needs. Hence, expansions to other countries have to be phased in progressively, starting from the local customers where you are most familiar.
10. Everywhere Commerce Still boarding. Paying with a plastic credit card is probably going to go away someday, but not yet. Still, 2012 will offer consumers many more payment options.
My thoughts: Agree. Although other modes of payment are available, credit cards still reign as the leading method of payment for online purchases. Your product and your customers’ buying preferences will influence which payment methods to use. In some countries where credit cards are not as pervasive, marketers may want to consider offering alternative payment methods. Offering multiple payment options is also a means to increase sales by increasing customer convenience. Whichever modes of payment, security is of paramount importance to customers and you need to ensure that transactions are encrypted and handled by a secure server.
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