20 things a retailer really should know about their customers. A few weeks ago, I wrote an article emphasising the importance of customer data and insight to shaping a retail marketing strategy. Unfortunately, in my experience, key decisions are too often based on guesswork; following the latest fad, copying the competition or buying a solution that isn’t aligned to objectives and customer behaviour. Having run a survey at a recent ecommerce conference, I now have some evidence to support that somewhat anecdotal statement. We asked a room of premium and luxury retailers to review twenty statements related to customer data and insight.
We had 45 responses so I don’t claim this to be the most exhaustive study, but I think there are some interesting findings. Furthermore, the list below does not cover everything a retailer should know about their customers. Clearly, as you get more granular with your search, email and social strategies, for example, there will be specific metrics used to measure behaviour. How did you score? Areas of greatest concern. What is conversion rate optimisation (CRO) and why do you need it? As a relative newcomer to the digital marketing world, I've decided to write a series of 'beginner's guides' to uncover what is meant by certain terms, trends and technological advances in digital; being both a travel guide and a personal investigation. Here I’ll be answering the following questions: What is conversion? What is CRO? How can CRO be measured and improved? In a tone of voice that has been described as both 'helpful' and 'not too rambling'.
According to three out every five companies, CRO is crucial to their overall digital marketing strategy. Let's say your site is doing brilliantly in many areas. Unfortunately the people visiting your site aren’t achieving the goal you actually intended them to achieve in the first place. ‘Conversion’ may not necessarily be a purchase, although more often than not it can be. Whatever the ultimate point of your website is, a conversion is the successful completion of that action. A/B or multivariate testing What is A/B testing? Examples. Five tips for better customer journey analysis. Understanding the customer journey has always been crucial to determining the most effective use of advertising. While there are many technical solutions out there which help uncover the path to conversion, particularly within the online sphere, the incorporation of more traditional methods such as modelling are proving successful in providing insights not just for online marketing decisions but importantly for multichannel analysis.
Here are five considerations for getting the most of your customer journey analysis... 1. Know the limitations of the tech Since many businesses who devote large budgets to online advertising also invest in offline advertising (TV and print), allocation of budget based on purely technological solutions can actually be sub-optimal because it overlooks offline advertising completely. Because of these limitations, efficient allocation of budget across various advertising media can be ineffective. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Email, social and SEO are most common channels for APAC marketers. In the West we often assume that cultural differences in APAC nations mean that marketers in the region are required to adopt a very different tactics to European or US marketers. However data taken from Econsultancy’s State of Digital Marketing in Asia Report shows that the toolkit is largely the same. When asked which of the following digital marketing channels they currently use, email emerged as the most popular answer among APAC businesses (79%). This was followed by off-site social media (6%) SEO (61%), and content marketing (58%).
Although non-desktop traffic is accelerating and the region has impressive mobile penetration levels, only around half (48%) of organisations use mobile marketing (up by only 3% since 2012). Which of the following digital channels or disciplines do you use for marketing? The report also asked agencies which types of mobile technologies their clients use for marketing. Which mobile channels or technologies do your clients use for marketing? Five key themes for fashion ecommerce success. So here’s the bad news. It’s no longer enough for your site to be ‘usable’ and ‘intuitive’. Today’s best in breed online retailers mastered the usability thing a while back and have long moved on. To survive in a competitive market your site must also draw customers in, provide ideas, inspiration and help all without being overly attentive and obtrusive.
Whether your site is selling high fashion or stationery, we can all learn something from the most successful online retailers. We used whatusersdo.com to find out what was working best on two big fashion retail sites: ASOS and H&M. Here are the five key themes both have hit upon to help them to their success. 1. There are many figures which prove how much more expensive it is to gain new customers than retain current ones.
That’s not to say you should plan for a complete overhaul of the design every few months but both sites used their home page and navigation to showcase latest products and display new images regularly. 5 Findability. 17 reasons for New Look's 79% leap in online sales, and eight areas for improvement. Last week New Look announced a 79% increase in online sales in the three months leading up to June . Ecommerce currently accounts for 10% of New Look's overall revenue, but that figure could well increase if online sales continue to show such strong growth. The increase in online sales is attributed to a number of factors , including a revamped website, upgrades to its iPhone app and an expanded click-and-collect service.
Such a massive boost in sales is obviously worth investigating, so here's a roundup of some of the factors that New Look gets right on its desktop and mobile platforms. And I've also flagged up a few areas that could potentially be improved on. To find out more about how to create seamless multichannel experiences, come to Econsultancy's JUMP event which takes place on October 9 in Central London. Things New Look gets right... Product pages include stock information Decent product filter options Click and Collect Consistent navigation Free UK returns Use of live chat Tiny CTAs. 14 reasons behind John Lewis' 44% increase in online sales. Among the top selling gifts at Christmas were new gadgets such as e-readers and iPads. A quick Google search shows that John Lewis has clearly spent a lot of money on PPC to ensure it secures traffic for ‘iPad’ and ‘e-reader’ search terms, and also for ‘iPod’ and ‘Smart TV’. 2. Well designed product pages John Lewis’ product pages are by no means perfect, but they do tick several of the boxes for best practice.
For example, it has excellent product descriptions (details of the 64GB iPod Touch runs to 443 words), recommendations based on what other customers viewed, delivery costs, stock information and cross-selling of related items. All these are excellent features that help customers to make an informed purchase decision. On the down side though, the calls-to-action are quite small and the products I looked at only had one image, although there was a zoom function. 3. For most sites, this means a constant top navigation and search bar, as on John Lewis. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.