In this webinar, we’ll cover

• The Mobile Customer Journey: Understand how smartphones change consumer behavior and how to create a seamless omnichannel experience.
• Optimizing Mobile Space: Discover techniques to enhance user navigation and highlight key content above the fold.
• The Thumb Zone: Design for accessibility by placing important content and CTAs within easy reach.
• Effective CTAs: Learn best practices for creating compelling CTAs that convert.
• Streamlining Processes: Simplify checkouts and forms to reduce friction and encourage purchases.

Register now to save your spot!

The post Mastering Mobile Optimization for Modern Commerce appeared first on abtasty.

At the end of 2023, nearly 70% of the world’s population are smartphone users. And with an increasing number of people owning more than one phone, subscriptions have outpaced ownership at an estimated 7 billion this year (and is expected to reach 8 billion in 2028).

Smartphones have transformed how consumers interact with brands, creating an almost instant connection between inspiration and action.

Mobile website traffic peaked at 59% in 2022 before settling at 54% in 2023.

However, mobile conversion rates lag behind. Desktop and tablet conversions lead at 3.1% and 2.8%, while smartphones trail at 2.3%.

So, why the gap?

In our e-book, “Mobile Optimization Guide: Tips for Smartphone Survival,” we explore consumer behavior, industry trends, and mobile optimization tests from AB Tasty clients. Discover how smartphones impact the customer journey and learn strategies to optimize the user experience and boost conversions.

Topics discussed in this e-book include:

• Smartphones and the customer journey
• The importance of speed
• The thumb zone
• Maximizing available space
• Optimizing the call-to-action
• Streamlining processes

74% of Gen Z say they most often reach for mobile devices when shopping online.

Download your copy of the “Mobile Optimization Guide” today and start transforming your mobile strategy!

The post Mobile Optimization Guide: Tips for Smartphone Survival appeared first on abtasty.

How can you gain insights about your customers to improve your website’s usability and understand buying trends?

The answer is simple: build a customer journey map.

In this blog, we’ll dive into a few things: what is a customer journey, a customer journey map, how to map the customer journey visually, templates of different customer journeys, a step by step guide for how to create them, and examples of customer journeys in action. Let’s get started

What is a customer journey?

A customer journey is a combination of all the interactions customers have with your brand before reaching a specific goal.

Creating a compelling journey helps you stand out and shows customers that you care about their experience. An enjoyable customer journey promotes positive engagement, making for more satisfied customers that are more likely to return for repeat purchases.

By better understanding your customers, you’ll be able to provide them with the best possible user experience every time they visit your online store. The best way to do this is by creating visual customer journey maps that present all this information about customers at a glance.

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of a customer’s interaction with your business or website. It’s used to define which parts of this process might not be working as smoothly as they should be, thus improving the customer’s experience.

The customer journey map is a (mostly) visual tool that helps businesses understand what a customer goes through when buying a product or service from them. It maps out in clear, concise, visual terms, the journey each customer is likely to experience through buyer personas and user data.

The best customer journey map is a story, brought to life visually, of the customer’s experience. In essence, the best customer journey map is a story, brought to life visually, of the customer’s experience. It should be noted, however, that more complex information on the map may require text.

The map itself highlights “touchpoints, which are specific elements of the customer’s interaction with a business. Each of these touchpoints – for example, seeking a product, researching its content, buying the product, waiting for delivery, and returning it if unsatisfied – can be judged as negative, neutral, or positive from the customer’s perspective.

Customer journey maps require various research techniques that include hard data, customer feedback, and creative thinking. As such, no two maps are the same and each one will depend on many different factors that can’t be simplified or stereotyped as a matter of course.

The heart of customer journey maps: Buyer personas

Buyer personas are at the heart of a customer journey map tool and are broad representations, presented as fictional characters, based on real-life data and customer feedback. Typically, each project will create between three and seven buyer personas, each of which will require its own customer journey map.

The point of the customer journey map is to understand, as clearly as possible, what a customer will encounter when using your service. It will also help you improve the elements that are not functioning properly, are not easy to navigate, and show you how to make the entire experience more satisfying.

Each persona, and therefore the journey map itself, is not meant to be a perfect illustration of actual interactions. Rather, it’s a broad representation of the experience from the persona’s perspective.

Who Can Benefit From A Customer Journey Map?

There are many reasons why a customer journey map can be useful to a business. Customer satisfaction is more important than ever to a business, and it’s tied to loyalty to an extent that has not previously existed. Customers are more demanding, aware of their options, and willing to shop around.

By mapping each of the previously mentioned touchpoints, a well-designed customer journey map template can highlight any problems that clients might experience in the process of interacting with a business and help foster a relationship with an organization, product, service, or brand. This can occur across multiple channels and over a long period of time.

Once a customer journey map template has been designed, the entire enterprise can keep the customer at the forefront of the decision-making process. With a focus on the customer and their experience, or user experience (UX), any kinks, holes, or brick walls within the timeline’s touchpoints can be ironed out.

Bringing Together All Aspects Of The Business

Customer journey maps can help a business by bringing together departments with a focus on customer experience. To begin with, all departments can be engaged to discuss issues that customers may face when dealing with them. This is no small thing as many departments may not be used to dealing with customers, yet the decisions they take may have a profound effect on UX. By creating an understanding of how each touchpoint affects UX across the entire business, decisions can be made from an empathetic perspective.

Traditional marketing stops at the point of purchase, but customer experience does not necessarily end there. For example, perhaps the purchase was not to their satisfaction and they want to return the goods. Departments that might not typically be involved in touchpoints before purchase now have a central role to play. How easy is it for the customer to find the return information on a website? If they need information on delivery or collection times, how likely are they to get a response that will satisfy them? This all requires forethought and a policy that keeps customer experience central to design and organization.

How to map the customer journey visually

A customer journey map is a visual representation that helps you gain better insight into your customers’ experiences (from start to finish) from their point of view.

There are two vital elements to creating a customer journey map:

• Defining your customers’ goals
• Understanding how to map their nonlinear journey

By mapping out a customer’s digital journey, you are outlining every possible opportunity that you have to produce customer delight. You can then use these touchpoints to craft engagement strategies.

According to Aberdeen Group (via Internet Retailer), 89% of companies with multi-channel engagement strategies were able to retain their customers, compared to 33% of those who didn’t.

To visually map every point of interaction and follow your customer on their journey, you can use Excel sheets, infographics, illustrations, or diagrams to help you better understand.

Customer journey maps also help brands with:

• Retargeting goals with an inbound viewpoint
• Targeting a new customer group
• Forming a customer-centric mindset

All of these lead to better customer experiences, which lead to more conversions and an increase in revenue.

Want more information on the digital customer journey? Check out our digital customer journey resource kit for a detailed e-book, an editable workbook, a use case booklet, and an infographic.

Examples of Customer Journey Map Templates and Which to Choose

There are four different types of customer journey maps to choose from. Each map type highlights different customer behaviors as they interact with your business at different points in time. Choosing the right template is essential based on your goals.

1. Current state template

The current state template is the most commonly used journey map that focuses on what customers currently do, their way of thinking, and how they feel during interactions.

It’s great for highlighting existing pain points and works best for implementing incremental changes to customer experiences.

2. Future state template

The future state template focuses on what customers will do, think, and feel during future encounters. It’s useful for conveying a picture of how customers will respond to new products, services, and experiences.

3. Day in the Life Template

This template is similar to the current state template because it visualizes present-day customer behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. However, this template assesses how customers behave both with your organization and with peers in your area.

This type of journey map works best for spurring new initiatives by examining unfulfilled needs in the market.

4. Service Blueprint Template

When creating a service blueprint template, you typically begin with an abridged version of a current or future state journey map. Then you add a network of people, methods, procedures, and technologies responsible for giving a simplified customer experience, either in the present or in the future.

Current state blueprint maps are beneficial for recognizing the source of current pain points, whereas future state blueprint maps help create an environment that will be necessary for providing a planned experience.

How to Create a Customer Journey Map (7 Steps)

Creating customer journey maps may feel repetitive, but the design and application you choose will vary from map to map. Remember: customer journeys are as unique as your individual customers.

Step 1: Create Buyer Personas

Before creating a journey map, it’s important to identify a clear objective so you know who you’re making the map for and why. Building personas is the most time-consuming part of the process. It requires detailed research, including qualitative and quantitative data, and is the foundation of the entire process. A persona is a highly relatable and rounded fictional character, generalized, but not stereotyped.

Buyer personas help define customer goals, providing a deeper understanding of their needs and topics of interest. More detail makes for more realistic personas, which means you’ll need to do a fair amount of market research to acquire this data.

Start by creating a rough outline of your buyer’s persona with demographics like age, gender, occupation, education, income, and geography. When you have that in place, you’ll need to get psychographic data on your customers. This kind of information may be harder to collect compared to demographic data, but it is worthwhile to understand customer preferences, needs and wants.

In short, demographics tell you who your customers are and psychographics provide insights into the why behind their behavior. Collecting concrete data on your customers helps you serve them better and deliver a more personalized user experience.

Collecting concrete data on your customers helps you serve them better and deliver a more personalized user experience.

Step 2: Select Your Target Customer

After making several customer personas, it’s time to do a “deep dive” into each to build a more accurate reflection of their experience.

Start by analyzing their first interaction with your brand and mapping out their movements from there.

What questions are they trying to answer? What is their biggest priority?

Step 3: List Customer Touchpoints

Any interaction or engagement between your brand and the customer is a touchpoint.

List all the touchpoints in the customer journey, considering everything from the website to social channels, paid advertisements, email marketing, third-party reviews, or mentions.

Which touchpoints have higher engagement? Which touchpoints need to be optimized?

All customer journey mapping examples are unique. Therefore, touchpoints on one map are unlikely to work for another. In fact, every business needs to update its buyer personas and customer journey maps as their business changes. Even quite subtle changes can have profound effects on the customer journey map template.

Step 4: Identify Customer Actions

Once you have identified all your customer touchpoints, identify common actions your customers make at each step. By dividing the journey into individual actions, it becomes easier for you to improve each micro-engagement and move them forward along the funnel.

Think of how many steps a customer needs to reach the end of their journey. Look for opportunities to reduce or streamline that number so customers can reach their goals sooner. One way to do this is by identifying obstacles or pain points in the process and creating solutions that remove them.

This is a great time to use the personas you created. Understanding the customer will help you troubleshoot problem areas.

Anticipating what your customer will do is another important part of mapping the customer journey. Accurate predictions lead to you providing better experiences, which ultimately leads to more conversions.

Step 5: Understand your available resources

Creating customer journey maps presents a picture of your entire business and highlights every resource being used to build the customer experience.

Use your plan to assess which touchpoints need more support, such as customer service. Determine whether these resources are enough to give the best customer experience possible. Additionally, you can correctly anticipate how existing or new resources will affect your sales and increase ROI.

Step 6: Analyzing the Customer Journey

An essential part of creating a customer journey map is analyzing the results.

Now you have your data, customer journey mapping template, touchpoints, and goals, it’s time to put it all together and define where the UX is meeting expectations and where things can be improved. It is important to note that mapping where things are going well is almost as important as defining what isn’t. Some elements of the journey can be spread to other areas.

As you assess the data, look for touchpoints that might drive customers to leave before making a purchase or areas where they may need more support. Analyzing your finished customer journey map should help you address places that aren’t meeting customers’ needs and find solutions for them.

Take the journey yourself and see if there’s something you missed or if there is still room for improvement. Doing so will provide a detailed view of the journey your customer will take.

Follow your map with each persona and examine their journeys through social media, email, and online browsing so you can get a better idea of how you can create a smoother, more value-filled experience.

One of the best ways of pinpointing where things are not going to plan is through customer feedback. This is typically done through surveys and customer support transcripts.

Step 7: Take Business Action

Having a visualization of what the journey looks like ensures that you continuously meet customer needs at every point while giving your business a clear direction for the changes they will respond to best.

Any variations you make from then on will promote a smoother journey since they will address customer pain points.

A great way to test your variations to find out what better serves your customers throughout their user journey is by leveraging A/B testing.

AB Tasty is a best-in-class A/B testing solution that helps you convert more customers by leveraging experimentation to create a richer digital experience – fast. This experience optimization platform embedded with AI and automation can help you achieve the perfect digital experience with ease.

Analyzing the data from your customer journey map will give you a better perspective on changes you should make to your site to reach your objective.

Once you implement your map, review and revise it regularly. This way, you will continue to streamline the journey. Use analytics and feedback from users to monitor obstacles.

Customer Journey Map Examples

Customer journey map templates are varied, some appear like works of art, while others are the work of a child, but as long as they are clear and concise, they can be effective.

This customer journey map for the charity ‘The Samaritans’ is a highly empathetic map, focused on the purpose of the charity itself. Note how the text is highly visual and therefore makes it easy to relate to the image of the map itself.

This is an example of a map that gives the impression of a journey, rather than a linear UX. This can help push home the point that customer experience is rarely easy to define as a journey from A to B.

The Truth about Customer Journeys

Customer journeys are ever-changing. Journey maps help businesses stay close to their customers and continuously address their needs and pain points. They provide a visual of different customers which helps to understand the nuances of their audience and stay customer-focused.

Customer journey maps can vary widely, but all maps share the same steps. With regular updates and the proactive removal of roadblocks, your brand can stand out, provide meaningful engagement, improve customer experiences, and see positive business growth.

The post How To Build A Customer Journey Map appeared first on abtasty.

Capturing attention and standing out in a market saturated with so many options is a challenge now more than ever. To overcome the digital noise, many businesses are aiming to enhance the customer experience with two approaches: customization vs personalization.

What’s the difference between customization and personalization? Are they two terms we can use interchangeably or are they two entirely different concepts? 

You guessed it – customization and personalization describe two very different, but not entirely unrelated, practices. Though not the same, (mass) customization and personalization strategies revolve around people’s deep-seated desires for self-expression and recognition – as well as their limited attention spans in a loud, digital world.

Let’s take a deep dive together into the sea of information we have about customization vs personalization.

What’s the difference between customization and personalization?

Customization and personalization are often thought of as synonyms, but while some crossover certainly exists, they are very different terms referring to very different practices. They overlap in their ability to make the customer feel as if they have a unique relationship with the brand in a way that the mass marketing of the past could never achieve.

Both practices have proven particularly well suited to Millennials, the largest consumer age group, who have an instinctive mistrust of older forms of advertisement but are more influenced by both customization and personalization-based marketing. So what exactly are the differences and how do they work?

Customization Definition: Giving the power to the users

The most common form of customization comes in the form of product customization and is typically found online. Product customization is particularly popular for clothing outlets, whereby shoppers can design a piece of clothing from an online template, using different colors, fabrics, and shapes to make their own ‘unique’ product.

Customization examples:

Nike is one of the most important innovators in the field, allowing you to customize every aspect of your sneaker.

Another brand that has used product customization to great effect is Burberry, which has gone from strength to strength in recent years, partly due to being an innovator in the field of product customization.

This is sometimes referred to as ‘mass customization’ whereby online tools allow the customization process to produce bespoke products at mass-produced prices.

What is mass customization?

Mass customization is all about customer experience, sometimes referred to as CX, which marks an enormous shift from shopping habits that were once almost entirely about the product.

Interacting with brands and producing individual styles, or at least appearing to, is at least as important to Millennials as the functionality of a product, and there is little reason to think that subsequent generations will not have similar expectations in the future, especially with technology becoming so ubiquitous and powerful. Wherever retail goes in the near future, CX is going to be an essential part of it. While the cutting edge of customization is not a major preserve of older generations, the need to keep such platforms simple and easy to use should not be ignored.

One of the issues facing businesses offering product customization is how quickly can each purchase be produced? Convenience is also thought to be a major concern for shoppers in the 21st century, and patience is not seen as a virtue. This goes to the heart of the customer experience and will likely inform how successful the model is for each business. The more complex mass customization becomes, the larger on-demand mass production will be.

One thing is for sure, what was once the preserve of the burger joint or ice cream parlor, customization is fast spreading to all aspects of retail, and as a result, is changing everything.

Personalization Definition: Tailor your user’s entire experience

Personalization is one of the most misunderstood marketing terms of all.

Often misunderstood for customization, recommendation, and even optimization, it is instead a set of well-defined practices with an overall purpose or goal. Unlike customization, which offers a very specific set of tools for customer interaction, personalization has far-reaching methods and possibilities and is currently at the very beginnings of its potential. It also touches upon issues of privacy, politics, and generational divides.

In the broadest sense, personalization is marketing designed with the individual in mind. Obviously, there is no single human observing individual tastes to present products or services that are most relevant. This is where highly sophisticated algorithms come in.

One type of personalization is the recommendation engine, although it should be noted that personalization is not a type of recommendation. The most common of these are websites and streaming services, such as YouTube or Netflix. If you have ever used these sites you will know that certain box sets or videos are recommended based on previous viewing habits. To begin with, these were obviously connected programs.

For example, if you had watched a basketball documentary, there’s a good chance that one on baseball would interest you. So far, so simple. But, as recommendation engines become more sophisticated, seemingly unconnected content works just as well. The same type of algorithms are used in retail, most famously by Amazon, and include Email campaigns that are tailored to the individual and addressed personally. This is the beginning of personalization.

Personalization also uses segmentation, for example, individual traits, such as age, gender, or location, all of which can profoundly change how marketing information is presented. Beyond that, a person’s politics, browsing behavior, and even ethical concerns can be taken into account.

We should pause here to consider the two main versions of personalization, rule-based and machine learning.

• Rule-based personalization relies on the previously mentioned segmentation model, whereby the audiences are broken down into both broad and granular segments, such as age or location. 
• Machine learning personalization, on the other hand, uses algorithms. These can be those used in recommendation engines and even parts of segmentation marketing, such as behavior. 

Whereas basic algorithms can provide broad data, such as what is trending, recommendation engines, and the like, provide more in-depth information for the individual.

Personalization vs customization in e-commerce

Customization can come in many forms, from fast food restaurants that encourage customers to design their food their way, to online stores that allow visitors to design their own clothing.

Personalization, on the other hand, is a far more complex practice that takes into account customer (or potential customer) behavior in order to market the right products, to the right person, at the right time. Using big data and powerful algorithms, personalization is becoming a more powerful tool every day, with a diverse number of businesses implementing it to great success.

Getting the most out of both practices requires an understanding of how they both work and the major differences between them.

You can certainly see the similarities between customization and personalization:

• Both aim to make consumers feel uniquely understood and marketed as individuals. 
• Both put a high value on self-expression and personal tastes and experiences. 
• Both create the illusion that consumers are being given white-glove treatment and have a one-on-one relationship with the brand. 
• Both, in a way, involve the consumer as a co-producer of value – for customization, it means relying on their predilections to craft the product, and for personalization, it’s sharing their data (unbeknownst to them or not) to create personalized marketing messages.

Ultimately, through a product strategy on the part of the company, mass customization is driven by the consumer. Especially appealing to Millennials, it’s a way of validating their own sense of self through ‘build-a-bear’ style product production.

With personalization, the onus is much more on the company to bring value and deliver meaning to the consumer audience they’re targeting.

People naturally crave to be in control of their surroundings and personalization techniques create a cherry-picked environment that feeds into that need. Bargain hunting for low-priced kitchenware from your favorite outlet? If ads for the very items you’re looking for suddenly appear all over the internet, it somehow creates a feeling of empowerment, as if in some impossible way, your wishes and needs automatically manifest.

As for information overload, this is the classic argument that contemporary consumers are exposed to a dizzyingly high number of marketing messages, far too many to consciously register, remember, or act on. Personalization strategies both (hopefully) limit the number of marketing messages a consumer is exposed to in the first place, as well as stimulate the brain to recognize these stand-out strategies, as opposed to letting them sit in the background of our consciousness. This is the idea of selective attention or the fact that your brain will automatically pick up on potentially important stimuli – i.e. those most relevant to you.

Web Personalization And Privacy Concerns: Customization and Personalization

Privacy is a major concern for many consumers and personalization has sometimes seemed more like an unwelcome stalker to some as a result. With legislation being debated in various corners of the world, what is deemed as overstepping the mark should be a concern for all.

All generations have some concerns regarding personalization and privacy, not helped by various data leaks and hacks of major companies. The truth of the matter, however, is that personalization shouldn’t be “creepy.” Transparency is a great way to instil trust with customers. Personalization need not be a back-door practice, where using personal data is hidden behind jargon and misleading declarations. Most website visitors are happy to share data as long as they know how it’s being used, especially if there is some advantage in it for them.

Being able to opt-out is another great way to make customers feel as if they have some control over the process. In some cases, the personalization process itself can be customized. While most users won’t bother engaging, they will appreciate the option to.

Evolution From Mass Marketing To One-To-One Marketing

Mass marketing is where a product or service is marketed to an entire population. It essentially treats everyone the same, with the same needs. Although that is clearly not the case, the philosophy revolves around the idea that the more people who receive the message, the more likely you will reach someone who is interested. It’s essentially the practice of selling low-cost and homogenous items at high volumes. While it’s more miss than hit, mass marketing was well suited to mass media markets, such as television, which had the majority of the population engaging with it on a regular basis.

Mass marketing began in the 1920’s, with the advent of radio. The popularity of this form of media made it ripe for advertisers to market products in a way that wasn’t possible before. As attitudes shifted over the decades, mass marketing’s influence rose and fell until the 1980’s and 1990’s, when it reached its peak.

History of mass marketing timeline:

• 1920’s – Begins with the advent of radio
• 1930’s – The great depression reduces its influence
• 1940’s and 1950’s – With income rising, its effectiveness becomes relevant again through the “Mad men” era
• 1960’s and 1970’s – A rise in anti-Capitalism sees its influence wane again
• 1980’s and 1990’s – The peak years of mass marketing during the economic boom

The history of one-to-one marketing is essentially a history of the Internet. When the first HTML dialogue occurred on Christmas Day, 1990, it set in motion the beginnings of personalization. Also in 1993, Webtrends was founded, which was essentially the first commercial web analytics program. Unfortunately, only those well-versed with the technology had any idea of how to read the data, so its effects were minimal.

Things carried on at pace, however, and log file analysis made it possible for non-tech people, most importantly marketers, to make use of the data. This was soon followed by hit counters and Javascript tagging, which became important as the Internet began to use more imagery. With few people using the Internet, however, the advances made during this time were not to be truly helpful for a few years to come.

It wasn’t until 2004 that the type of web analytics we know today began to appear and by 2005 Google had released Google Analytics. This allowed website owners to dig further into the data than had been previously possible, with concise visuals that allowed for easy reading of in-depth information. It’s at this point that personalization becomes more tangible, with conversion rate optimization becoming a particular focus.

Machine learning personalization, such as recommendation engines, soon began to be useful in a way that was not possible before, as algorithms began to exponentiate their capabilities, with Amazon and Netflix leading the way. From Email campaigns to accurate predictions of preferences, the practices of personalization became ubiquitous by 2008.

Mouse tracking and eye tracking also added profound data that improves visitor experience and thus increases interaction. With a deeper understanding of customer habits, personalization is beginning to become more accurate, focused, and effective.

With the advent of multiple devices using the Internet, Google released Universal Tracker in 2012. With more profound data at its fingertips, demographics, behavior, and lifestyle began to be segmented more accurately, further categorizing customers for more predictable results. App personalization becomes more and more important as phone use begins to outstrip laptops/desktops for online use. Machine learning on mobile soon improves.

Soon after, personalization magnifies the effectiveness of CRM (Customer Relation Management), which focuses on user experience and customer retention. This only becomes possible as big data is collected at ever higher rates, allowing companies to truly understand their customer’s needs.

With the use of A/B testing, the future of personalization is now highly managed from beginning to end. No longer is trial and error at the forefront of designers of websites or marketing campaigns. Behavior on site is monitored to a level thought unimaginable just a few years ago and personalization is becoming truly individualized. User experience is now at the heart of personalization, and with the likelihood of more powerful algorithms and customer understanding to come, personalization seems to be very much in its infancy.

Optimize to find your better.

Good things come to those who change.

GET A DEMO

How to start your personalization strategy

Website personalization shouldn’t be a complicated undertaking. In fact, it is becoming easier, and therefore more widespread, every day. With several tools at a business’s disposal, there are many ways to go about creating personalization that works for each business. In other words, personalization should be personal for each business using it.

The first place to begin is getting to know an audience. Too many start with the concept that the product is key and then try to persuade an audience that they are right. This is similar to a waiter insisting that the customer has made the wrong order when they chose the duck and bringing them beef instead. As should be clear now, customer experience has become one of the most important aspects of personalization, and that cannot be achieved without getting to know exactly what it is your customer expects from the interaction with your website.

Want more on personalization? Read our E-book: Your Guide to Personalization

What’s Better: Personalization or Customization?

You want your customers to feel unique and have a positive experience with your brand. For you, this could mean implementing personalization tactics or dabbling into the world of product customization. Bettering your customers’ experience could mean focusing on customization, personalization, or a mixture of both. If you design your roadmap with your customers in mind, you’ll find customer loyalty and satisfaction along the way.

The post Customization vs Personalization: What’s the Difference? appeared first on abtasty.

People increasingly ignore irrelevant ads while being more receptive to tailored online experiences that speak to their needs and wants. To keep a competitive edge, marketers need to focus on crafting personalized content and user experiences to increase their ad engagement and boost revenue.

Welcome to the world of behavioral targeting.

Let’s talk about how behavioral targeting is done, what data it involves, six examples of brands that are killing it with behavioral targeting, and some best practices to follow.

What is behavioral targeting?

Behavioral targeting is a marketing technique that segments audiences based on behaviors rather than just demographic parameters.

Simply put, website owners can use the data collected from user behavior to create profiles and hyper-target future advertising for specific groups of customers. Behavioral targeting allows brands and marketers to engage customers and rise above more traditional strategies.

Modern marketers use behavioral targeting to achieve greater engagement in an era where more and more online shoppers have developed strong avoidance habits toward most ad formats.

What data do you need for behavioral targeting in marketing and advertisement?

Behavioral targeting campaigns are data-driven. Behavioral data is often collected with:

• Your company’s web analytics tools
• Collected cookies
• Customers’ browsing history
• Collected IP addresses

The most common metrics collected for behavioral targeting are:

• Geographic location
• Type of devices used
• Visit data
• Transactional data
• Purchase history
• Browsing history

Basically, marketers use any type of data—provided that it delivers actionable insights—that can be used to increase engagement and conversions during a campaign.

The benefits of behavioral marketing and behavioral advertising

• Relevancy: By analyzing a customer’s past behavior, you can create more relevant ads to give users a better (and less spammy) experience.
• Efficiency: Targeting users who’ve shown an interest in your products/services ensures you spend your budget more efficiently. 
• Improved ROI: Increasing the relevancy and efficiency of ads will, in turn, lead to a better ROI. 

Behavioral targeting examples

Retargeting ads examples

You can use retargeting advertisements to show advertisements to your website users that are tailored to their actions on your website. Both Facebook and Google offer retargeting adverts. Retargeting adverts are an excellent way to encourage a website visitor to return to your website by showing the relevant ad based on their past behavior. Here’s how a couple of large brands use retargeting adverts to increase sales:

• Neutrogena

Neutrogena, a well-known beauty brand, used customers’ past shopping cart behavior to increase sales. Knowing that 75% of its customers were purchasing products from one segment of its range, Neutrogena decided to take action to increase the number of products purchased by existing customers.

The company used historic shopping cart data to create product pairings: products that went well together and also reflected historic customer buying patterns — think mascara and eye makeup remover, for example.

Armed with customers’ purchase behaviors, Neutrogena created banner advertisements and videos displaying product pairing, product information, and – last but not least – coupons to encourage sales.

Finally, these product pairing adverts were displayed to customers based on their past purchasing patterns. The results speak for themselves. Neutrogena got a £5.84 return on behavioral advertising spend (ROAS) and exceeded its own benchmark by 289%.

• Aurum Brothers

This luxury male watch brand used its users’ website behaviors and Facebook retargeting advertisements to increase sales and brand awareness.

The campaign segmented the company’s existing website users into three groups: 

• People who had added an item to their baskets
• People who had viewed specific items
• People who had visited the website

As well as designing specific adverts for each group, Aurum Brothers tested different ad settings such as bid options and ad objectives.

Facebook retargeting based on customer behavior was highly successful for the company. They reported 100% increases month on month and an increase of 50% in revenue.

Behavioral Email Marketing

One example of behavioral marketing is behaviorally targeted email campaigns. Email campaigns can be triggered by actions taken on a website, such as subscribing to a newsletter, adding an item to the cart, or viewing the sales page.

Here’s an example of behavioral email marketing in real life:

• Closet London

A clever way to use behavioral targeting is to segment your customers based on their stage in the buying cycle, and then retarget them with email campaigns specific to their shopping journey.  

And that’s exactly what clothing brand Closet London did. 

The company split its customer base into four groups based on their past purchases and implemented email marketing workflows specific to each group. The groups were:

• one-time purchases
• repeat purchases
• loyal customers
• dormant customers

If a customer is categorized as a dormant customer, they will be sent an email about the latest collection. Then, if no conversion takes place within two weeks, the brand encourages the user to re-engage by emailing them a discount offer. 

But Closet London doesn’t stop there. The clever clothing brand also sends a variety of other email campaigns tailored to both new users (e.g. a welcome email campaign) and past customers (e.g. an email workflow based on the items they’ve purchased in the past).

If you’re concerned that too many emails may annoy your customers, don’t be. 

By segmenting customers based on their actions on your website, you ensure that you’re sending well-timed, relevant, and useful emails to the correct segmentation of your customers. Do it successfully and you might get results like Closet London — an increase in revenue of 2900%.

Location-Based Advertising

By using location-based advertising (LBA) you can adapt your marketing message based on where your target consumers are geographically. 

It even allows you to tailor your message based on the proximity to stores, the weather, transport routes, and so on. This means that you can create messages that make sense, given the location or the weather they are experiencing. 

Here are some examples of brands using location-based advertising to generate sales and build brand awareness:

• Timberland

Timberland wanted to drive a younger demographic of customers to visit its physical stores and stockists. 

Timberland used a combination of data, including whether a user had recently visited a brick-and-mortar store and how close they were to a store at the time.

The brand used technology to draw polygons around Timberland stores to target people in the “mindset to purchase footwear.” 

The campaign results showed an increase in-store visits by 6.2%, with, notably, 20% of these visits within 24 hours of the user viewing the advertising campaign. 

• Neutrogena (again)

We’ve already discussed how Neutrogena used customers’ past shopping cart behaviors to increase its sales, so we know that the beauty brand is no stranger to behavioral targeting. 

However, its next strategy – to advertise a new sunscreen – was rather ingenious. 

Not happy to only target customers based on weather forecast apps, Neutrogena used real-time UV conditions, the time of day, and the proximity to shops selling Neutrogena to target potential customers. 

Imagine browsing your phone on an unexpectedly hot summer’s day. You flick through Facebook and see a Neutrogena advert. You head to your nearest store and, surprise, surprise, it sells Neutrogena.

Which sunscreen will you purchase? I’m going to bet it’s Neutrogena. 

Again, the results are stellar. Within a couple of months, the campaign increased awareness of the sunscreen from zero to 63% and increased purchase intent to more than 40%. 

Suggested Selling Examples

Suggested selling is simply offering choices based on items that customers have already purchased. Suggested selling can come in the form of upselling or cross-selling, neither of which are new to the retail world. 

• Amazon

No article about suggested selling would be complete without discussing Amazon, arguably the Godfather of this technique. 

According to this source, more than a third of Amazon’s revenue comes from its recommendation engine. That’s massive, but how does it work? Well, in a handful of ways. 

Recommended for You

On Amazon’s home page, you can click on a “Your Recommendations” link. This directs you to a page full of products recommended just for you. By suggesting a selection of products from the categories you’ve already viewed, Amazon aims to encourage you to click and buy additional items. 

Frequently Bought Together

By adding a ‘frequently bought together’ section below your cart, Amazon successfully manages to increase your order value.

Browsing History

Amazon also shows you a history of the items you’ve purchased on Amazon. The fact that you’ve already viewed it signals that you’ve previously been interested in purchasing it, so it’s an easy way for Amazon to remind you of the product. 

• Sunuva 

Sunuva may be a less well-known brand on the list, but its use of behavioral targeting has generated excellent results. 

This UK-based kid’s clothing company wanted to increase sales, but with a small team, whatever the solution, it needed to be automated and easy to implement. 

One of the core elements to increase sales was to focus on and reduce cart abandonment rates. 

After a website redesign, Sunuva was able to use browsing behavior and real-time crowd-sourced data from other visitors.  

This enabled the company to present its website visitors with relevant product recommendations, as well as email campaigns with content tailored to the customer, instead of generic offers. 

Remarkably, the changes increased turnover by nearly 9% from the very first day. 

Why is behavioral targeting slowly replacing demographic targeting?

Demographic data is limited.

Age, location, and income are all great factors in helping marketers create targeted messages. However, demographic data is fairly restricted when it comes to understanding the needs, wants, habits, and pain points of your customers.

Demographic data won’t tell you much about your customers’ behavior. Using strictly demographic data is often a hit-or-miss game.

Using behavioral data, marketers can target their own visitors by knowing which pages they’ve visited and what they’ve left in their carts. It allows for extremely precise targeting that cannot be achieved using demographic data.

Getting customers’ attention is harder than ever.

With more and more people ignoring generic ad formats, marketers worry that traditional PPC advertising and display ads are losing momentum.

Demographic data is used by everyone

Most demographic data can be accessed by anyone, including your competitors.

To keep their edge, marketers should use their own customer’s data to create more personalized online experiences. That way, marketers can achieve greater ROAS and ROI while ensuring their customers are exposed to the right ads, at the right time.

The next step of behavioral marketing: emotional personalization

Emotions play a pivotal role in every step of the buying process. To truly connect with consumers, brands must decode not just their behaviors, but also the emotional motivations behind their decisions. Purchasing decisions are not always rational, and not everyone reacts in the same way.

With AB Tasty’s new hyper personalization software, EmotionsAI, you can craft tailored messages for each visitor type, analyze data to discern their desires, conduct experiments to refine messaging and design personalized journeys that cater to specific emotional triggers.

Stay ahead of the curve in experience optimization with EmotionsAI – the ultimate tool for mastering emotional personalization. Dive into emotional personalization with sophisticated algorithms to anticipate buying patterns and tailor experiences accordingly.

5 Behavioral targeting marketing and advertisement tactics

1. Leverage upselling & cross-selling

Knowing what your customers love and how they interact with your business is a massively powerful tool to suggest additional products to them.

Take Spotify. They track the music we listen to and the frequency at which we do it, and then craft personal ads based on our preferences to sell concert tickets and bring us back to their app. Behavioral marketing is that powerful.

If your company has any e-commerce activities, then you’re likely already familiar with cross-selling and suggested products: techniques that are also powered by behavioral marketing.

As an example, Macy’s uses product recommendations to promote related products based on customers’ data, to increase basket value.

2. Use behavioral email marketing campaigns

According to FPS research insights, email marketing still delivers the highest conversion rates when it comes to selling products and services.

Knowing this, marketers can strengthen their email marketing campaigns by using behavioral targeting tactics.

Basically, behavioral email marketing consists of sending targeted emails to users based on their past actions on a website (cart abandonment, pages visited, newsletter subscription, etc.).

Take this example: Quora’s goal is for you to return to their website as much as possible.

By knowing which pages you’ve read in the past, Quora is able to send personalized emails highlighting similar topics to pique your interest and draw you back to their site.

This is behavioral targeting on an individual scale.

3. Leverage Facebook, Google, and other retargeting services

Retargeting and remarketing are common tactics used to target potential customers who’ve previously visited your website by showing them ads on other websites (like online publications, social networks, or even game sites).

There are several ad networks that support retargeting.

Among them, Facebook and Google are the most common options because they reach large audiences and provide accurate data and analysis on the generated sales. They also boast a lot of integrations with third-party data analysis tools.

Nowadays, the number of factors that can be tracked is impressive:

• Which pages have been visited?
• How long were the sessions?
• Which products were bought?
• What was the average order value?
• How many products were purchased?
• How long has it been since a visitor’s last session?
• Which customers have added a product to the cart and then abandoned it?

Once marketers have gathered enough behavioral data, they can proceed to create user segments based on behavioral traits and show them highly relevant ads.

Here’s an example of retargeting:

Let’s say your e-commerce generates high cart abandonment rates.

You can create a user segment based on people who have abandoned a specific product (say, your best seller) in their cart and create an ad that will target these users. To increase its efficiency, you can create a sense of urgency by offering them a discount provided that they buy the item now.

If you successfully target the right people, your ad’s audience is now exclusively composed of potential customers who already know your product, thus generating much higher conversion rates.

Although we’ve talked a lot about Facebook and Google’s retargeting features, do not forget that other advertising platforms (like Outbrain or Criteo) can also provide remarketing services.

Your retargeted ads can appear on many websites, including major online publications such as Forbes or WSJ, depending on your audience’s habits and digital media consumption.

4. Go granular with precise geographic targeting

Whether you’re selling products or services, knowing the precise geolocation of your visitors (thanks to their IP addresses) can make a huge difference in your campaign’s success.

Let’s pretend that you run a clothing company that sells year-round fashion. Using your data analytics tool, you could create user segments based on their geolocation to advertise clothes that are relevant to them, given their current browsing location.

Geo-targeted ads can also be served at a city level, meaning that marketers can tailor ads to reach a restricted but qualified audience. This can be especially useful for companies that rely on their respective offices to carry out their business activities.

Using geo-targeted advertising, marketers are able to create specific, tailored audiences that leverage both behavioral and demographic parameters to ensure their campaign’s success.

5. Experiment with personalized coupons, offers, and discounts

Website personalization consists of crafting customized experiences based on consumers’ wants, needs, and past actions as opposed to offering a single, generic experience to all consumers regardless of their preferences.

Retail and tech giants like Amazon have long started to implement some level of website personalization (like wishlists and recommended products). Displaying different content based on a visitor’s personal preferences has become an essential marketing technique.

People don’t hate ads, they hate irrelevant ads.

Knowing this, marketers can create segment-based ads to increase relevancy and boost engagement.

This targeted pop-up ad has an offer enclosed to deter users from leaving the site. By using an all-in-one CRO solution (like AB Tasty) you can implement customized content on any page you want and craft your own display rules based on your consumers’ data.

How to create a personalized experience

Our team at AB Tasty knows how much of an impact customized experiences can make on our clients’ online revenue. So, we implemented a loyalty overlay pop-up for one of our French fashion retailers. This overlay pop-up would only appear for loyal customers and reward them with a limited discount.

Our goal was to increase customer retention while maximizing revenue from returning customers, boosting brand loyalty in the very competitive French fashion environment.

Getting Started with Behavioral Marketing

Behavioral marketing is a powerful way to carry out your marketing strategy. It uses the behaviors of your website visitors and customers to create highly relevant content that encourages them to make a purchase at your website or even in your online store.

This article has discussed some examples of brands successfully using behavioral marketing, but now it’s over to you to try it out for yourself.

Start by choosing one of the tactics shown in this article and see how it can make your advertising more relevant and successful.

The post 5 Behavioral Targeting Tactics to Boost Conversions (with Examples) appeared first on abtasty.

While these pages are often used as a catalog for your products and services, they can offer much more than an opportunity to optimize the customer experience. Since visitors browsing your product listing pages are already engaged with your online store, they just need one final push to convert.

In this article, we’ll show you everything you need to know about product listing pages, how to optimize your PLPs, and some examples of great product listing pages.

What are product listing pages?

Product listing pages (sometimes called PLPs or category landing pages) are pages on a website that display products based on a selected category; they may also be based on applied search filters. Product landing pages lead visitors to product detail pages where they can find more information on the items they’re interested in or even add said items to their cart.

One of the main drivers for optimizing your product listing pages is the opportunity they present for optimizing your user experience, as they can be tailored to shoppers with different user intent. On the one hand, we have buyers who visit a website knowing exactly what they are looking for. These potential buyers want to view the items that are most relevant to their search or intent (e.g. a user looking for a mountain bike doesn’t want to view road bikes). On the other hand, other visitors simply love browsing and use your PLPs to sift through the list of products that suit their preferences.

Of course, your product listing pages are not only about navigation and UX. They do much more. With a well-optimized PLP, you’ll be able to boost your SEO, increase user engagement, and improve your conversion rate!

Key elements of a product listing page and how to design your PLPs for better conversions

Creating an effective product listing page starts with the basics. Designing your product listing pages in an optimal way, with all the relevant elements, will increase the odds of shoppers finding the products they are looking for and making a purchase. Here’s what you should make sure to include in your product listing pages:

1. PLP page name: Descriptive title

Remember that Google will only display the first 25, 50, or 64 characters of your title, so make sure your PLP title is optimized accordingly. For example, if you are selling cell phones, you might want to structure your titles according to make, model, memory size, and color so that shoppers can see the most important information upfront.

2. Description: Keyword-rich

The product description and title have a big impact on your PLP’s SEO and product discoverability. Make sure that your descriptions are thorough and contain all the relevant keywords that will help you rank higher. Remember: the more specific, the better. 

3. Breadcrumbs: Proper category name 

Make sure that each product is placed in the most relevant category to both orient your shoppers and help them discover similar products. Breadcrumbs can display the parent category/subcategories so that users can jump back and forth between product listing pages with ease.

4. Imagery: Thumbnail

People process visual information faster than anything else, and your product images will be the first thing a customer sees. Use high-quality photos and be consistent (for example, use the same color background for every image). If you use various backgrounds, colors, and sizes, your customers will be distracted. Want proof? Read our case study on  Hanna Andersson where they have proven that keeping all images simple, clear, and harmonized will work wonders for results.

5. Price

Make sure that your pricing is competitive. Do your research and benchmark your prices against your competitors and make amendments. Highlight any other elements that make your pricing more competitive, like free shipping, or buy-one-get-one-free offers.

6. CTAs

Call to action buttons (also known as CTAs) are items that use imperative wording to nudge your users towards the action you want them to take, like “Add to cart now!” or “Save to Wishlist” if a product is unavailable. It’s important to create an effective CTA by following design best practices and carefully testing different variations of your call to action’s copy, location and colors.

Make sure that your button is visible against the background and all the other elements on the page. This not only draws the visitor’s eye to the call to action but shows them that the button is clickable. It’s important that your button looks like a button, even if you want to adopt a more minimalistic design for your website.

Next, make sure that your call to action conveys urgency. Using phrases like “Sign up now,”  “Hurry” or “Don’t delay” encourages your users to not only act, but to act fast. It’s also a good idea to utilize first-person copy so that the visitor feels more connected to the CTA.

7. Filter menu

This menu displays the filtering options available to refine searches by attributes, like pricing, color, style, availability, size, and more. This will help your customers find what they are looking for easily.

8. Sorting menu

The sorting menu presents different options for organizing products using a dropdown menu, including “Price: Low to High,” “Newest,” or “Rating: High to Low.”

Sorting options have a sole purpose: narrowing down the number of products in order to increase conversion. Your sorting options should be based on your audience’s needs and expectations regarding your products. Thinking in the minds of your customers is crucial for optimization at this point in the digital customer journey.

Let’s take WatchShop as an example.

WatchShop knows that watches come in all sorts of shapes and colors, so they created various sorting options to match visitors’ requests. This includes water resistance, strap type, case color, movement type, and so on.

It’s all tailored to match customers’ expectations – and it delivers. 

10 best practices for creating and optimizing product listing pages

Now that you know how to design your product listing pages, let’s get into how to optimize them for the best results:

1. Optimize headers or banners

Headers play the “title” role of each category and listing page design.

They’re the main indication of the page’s content and should be treated as the most important thing. If the header does not properly describe the page or the category, visitors will not be able to find what they are looking for.

Headers can reinforce your branding, so use the space on the top of your page to create a great-looking banner that engages and informs without adding clutter. In addition, never forget to include your keywords inside your <h1> tags. Not only will this make them more visible on the page, but they’re also a bit part of your on-page SEO efforts that will help you appear higher in search results.

In the image below, beauty specialist Ulta bets on shiny visuals to increase its headers’ visibility. It’s a good solution to avoid “all text” headers that can seem dull at first glance.

Note: headers can also be used as promotional spaces to display featured products, special offers, and discounts.

2. Experiment with multiple layouts on your product listing display

Your product listing display has a significant impact on the way your customers interact with the products. Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer when it comes to choosing between list and grid views. In fact, it all depends on what type of products you’re selling and what experience you want to provide. The most common choices are list view or grid view:

List view

List views require a little more scrolling but can display more product information than a grid. This makes it easy for shoppers to compare product attributes, like dimensions or features. Some sites let customers toggle between a list or grid view, depending on their preferences.

The list view is better suited for products that require extensive information and specifications in order to help customers compare aspects of similar products.

It’s a great fit for technical products like TVs, computers, electronics, DVDs, hardware, etc. However, this isn’t the only time to use list view for your product pages.

If we take a look at the image below, Wine.com sells luxury wines and champagnes. In this case, it’s important that visitors take their time benchmarking the brands and “grands crus” before making a purchase decision.

Notice how they capitalize on the extra horizontal space to display ratings.

Grid view

Grid views allow customers to browse and compare products next to each other. This is a good option if your site is picture-heavy and doesn’t require a lot of description outside the product titles.

Grid view is mostly used for products that rely a lot on pictures and can be compared quickly without paying much attention to the specifications. It also allows for more visual experiences.

Amazon uses grid view to display products inside its “gift ideas” category. They also use tags to rank the bestsellers and lure visitors into clicking on the products based on their popularity.

3. Add persuasion triggers

Persuasion triggers create a sense of urgency or scarcity. You most often see this on hotel booking sites or the sales section of a fashion store (“Only 1 item left at this price!” or “Selling out fast!”). These labels trigger visitors’ fear of missing out and push them to take action, so be sure to add them to your images to nudge them into making a purchase.

4. Personalize the shopping experience

Personalization can dramatically increase conversions, boost engagement, and help shoppers discover relevant products by sorting them according to their individual preferences. Personalization has also been known to reduce bounce rates by 20-30% and increase customer loyalty.

One thing you can do to personalize the experience for your visitors is to display complementary products that they might be interested in. For example, customers shopping for a new bedspread might also be interested in buying pillowcases or sheets, so steer them in that direction.

5. Use recommendations

If someone is already browsing your product listing page, the chances are that they already have the intent of making a purchase. This is the best time to make suggestions and cross-sell or upsell your products:

• Some customers suffer from decision fatigue when they are presented with too many options. Gently recommend popular products, others within the same category and with the same tags, or similar (but slightly pricier) alternatives.
• Show customers recommended products that might be relevant to the one they are viewing. For example, clients who are interested in a technical product would appreciate a “People who purchased this product also purchased” section that shows the accessories that go along with it.
• Present seasonal bestsellers to add specificity and relevance, which could lead to more clicks and conversions. We tend to think that other people’s actions are the correct ones, so if a product is tagged as “trending,” it gains additional legitimacy that could push a customer to make a decision.

Want more information about buyer behaviors in e-commerce? Check out our 2024 consumer study report!

6. Implement intuitive navigation

Your navigation has to be tailored to help prospective customers find what they are looking for as easily as possible with as little friction as possible. There are a few tips and tricks you can try, including:

• Put your best-selling items front and center: We’ve already touched on the fact that customers like knowing what items others are buying. The most popular options are often seen as the safest ones to buy. Throw in some social proof messages like user ratings to really drive the point home.
• Site speed is a crucial factor for UX: Make sure that your site loads quickly on both desktop and mobile devices to ensure that customers have an enjoyable experience.
• Ensure that your navigation bar is fixed to the top of the page and organizes your products in a logical fashion.

No matter the level of page depth, navigation always plays a crucial role in the user’s experience – and your product listing page should not be different. Because some products have complex specifications and require extensive sorting options, pay attention to your website’s performance when it comes to sorting products and helping customers find their perfect product.

In the image below, RevZilla does a great job of guiding customers through the endless journey of finding the right motorcycle helmet.

They use their left column to help customers sort and rank products according to several criteria (faceted search):

• Color
• Type
• Shape
• Category
• Size
• Gender
• Bonus point: RevZilla provides visitors the opportunity to only display products that have a video review. This is a huge value proposition compared to their competitors.

7. What information to display on your PLPs?

There are tons of options regarding which information you can display on your product listing pages and category pages. Simply put, you need to display information that will effectively help and convince consumers to move down the funnel and make a purchase.

In order to help you choose, here’s a list of information that may be displayed on your product listing page:

• Star ratings
• Discounts
• Color options
• Stock availability
• Best-sellers
• Add to cart
• New / Used
• Short descriptions

As an example in the image below, BestBuy does a great job of providing useful information on its product listing page. Besides the pictures and the price, they also added: star ratings, discounts, and an add to cart button with a smart color hierarchy.ㅤ

8. Optimize SEO for product listing pages

SEO is a big deal for most e-commerce players. In fact, search engine traffic accounts for around 50% of all e-commerce traffic according to a 2023 study led by SmartInsights.

There are two main reasons that justify the dominance of product listing pages regarding SEO:

A. Product listing pages are keyword-rich

Because they contain the names, brands, prices, specifications, and descriptions of products, category pages tend to be keyword-rich. This means that they naturally rank for a lot of keywords in search engines.

B. Product listing pages are the most heavily linked to

Product listing pages are typically where you want your customers to start their journey (or alternatively on the product page itself), which is why SEO pros tend to focus their efforts on these pages. Besides this, all products within a category generally link back to that category, which is a strong internal link-building pattern.

Tips for optimizing SEO on your product listing pages:

• Optimizing your title tags
• Using unique and original product and meta descriptions
• Linking to internal pages
• Using image alt attributes and rich snippets

9. Should you use Quick View or add-to-cart buttons?

Quick View is an e-commerce function that allows visitors to generate a miniature version of the desired product page. In other words, it’s a mini product page that generally embeds a direct “add to cart” button.

Not all products require lengthy deliberation and consideration before making a purchase, especially for returning customers or others purchasing fast-moving goods like groceries. Creating add-to-cart buttons makes it easier to speed through the checkout process. You can also implement add-to-wishlist buttons for more complex or expensive items to maximize conversions.ㅤ

10. Use clear and concise CTAs

Call to action buttons can have a massive impact on your conversions. When Dutch watch brand Cluse noticed that their product listing pages had high bounce rates (and that clicks to the product display pages were low), they turned to AB Tasty to find a solution.

Cluse set up a simple test to see whether changing their CTA’s location and color would improve the results. The team’s hypothesis was correct, and the site saw a 2.39% increase in the click-through rate to the product display page and a 1.12% uplift in transactions during the three-week test.

Examples of effective product listing pages

ASOS

ASOS uses short but descriptive copy on their product listing pages. 

The clothing retailer’s product listing pages are categorized by trends and style. They use extremely simple copy and appealing photographs to convince shoppers to make a purchase. Users can add items to their wishlist or cart directly from the product listing page and check out using the simple navigation banner.

Everlane

Everlane uses quick add-to-cart buttons to optimize their product listing pages

Everlane uses a number of features from the best practice guidebook, including adding product size options as an overlay in the image, easy navigation using the grid view and sidebar, and quick add-to-cart buttons.

Walmart

Walmart uses compelling headers and content on their product listing page.

Walmart puts bestsellers on top of their product listing pages, Walmart puts bestsellers on top of their product listing pages, along with engaging headers that feature collections by influencers like Sofia Vergara and Kim Kardashian. They also use quick add-to-cart buttons to make it easier to shop. The copy is clear and concise, and users are able to comfortably scroll through galleries of attractive images. Returning users are greeted with a warm, personalized message.

How many products per page and per row to display on your PLP?

If you opt for a grid view template, there’s no doubt that you’ll eventually come to the question, how many products per row?

As for choosing between list view and grid view, there’s no single answer that will fit everyone’s needs. In fact, the number of products displayed per row depends on 3 main factors:

1. Image size – If you choose to display big, high-resolution images; there’s no doubt that you will have a hard time squeezing more than 4-5 products in a row.
2. Number of products – The number of products listed per row also depends on your total number of products for a given category. If you only have 12 products to display, it’s a lot more coherent to opt for a 4X3 grid structure rather than 2X6. You need to fill the page visually.
3. Volume of information – Not all products are considered equal when it comes to their product description. Some products natively require more information than others. The more space they need, the fewer products you will display.

In the image below, Canada Goose, a high-quality outerwear provider, relies on a 2-products-per-row structure. This strategy highlights the visuals and delivers a more premium feeling to the user’s experience. 

How to find what works best on your product listing pages?

A/B test your product listing pages.

There is no secret when it comes to Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) – testing is what makes it work. The recipe for success doesn’t change for your product listing pages, you just have to A/B test them.

Now the question is, how can you do that? We have great news for you: we’re A/B testing specialists.

Making a good product listing page isn’t easy. You will have to identify elements that work and elements that don’t to gradually increase your conversions and offer an overall better user experience to your customers.

Want to start optimizing your product listing pages? AB Tasty is the best-in-class experience optimization platform that empowers you to create a richer digital experience – fast. From experimentation to personalization to smart search and recommendations, our solution can help you activate and engage your audience to boost your conversions.

Conclusion: The ultimate product listing page

Product listing pages can be conversion machines. When they’re properly optimized, they’re key for delivering an exceptional customer experience, helping you rise to the top of search engine results, and increasing basket size.

Whether you’re a seasoned seller or are venturing into the world of e-commerce for the first time, it may seem overwhelming to hit all the right notes – and find the best ideas to take your product listing pages to the next level!

Creating product listing pages will look a bit different depending on your market sector. However, for maximum performance, keep these best practices in mind for your e-commerce brand.

The post Your Guide to Product Listing Pages and How to Optimize Them (+ Examples) appeared first on abtasty.

We invited Holly Ingram from our partner REO Digital, an agency dedicated to customer experience, to talk us through the practical ways you can use experimentation when doing a website redesign.

Testing entire site redesigns at once is a huge risk. You can throw away years of incremental gains in UX and site performance if executed incorrectly. Not only do they commonly fail to achieve their goals, but they even fail to achieve parity with the old design. That’s why an incremental approach, where you can isolate changes and accurately measure their impact, is most commonly recommended. That being said, some scenarios warrant an entire redesign, in which case, you need a robust evidence-driven process to reduce this risk. 

Step 1 – Generative research to inform your redesign 

With the level of collaboration involved in a redesign, changes must be based on evidence over opinion. There’s usually a range of stakeholders who all have their own ideas about how the website should be improved and despite their best intentions, this process often leads to prioritizing what they feel is important, which doesn’t always align with customers goals. The first step in this process is to carry out research to see your site as your customers do and identify areas of struggle. 

It’s important here to use a combination of quantitative research (to understand how your users behave) and qualitative research (to understand why). Start off broad using quantitative research to identify areas of the site that are performing the worst, looking for high drop-off rates and poor conversion. Now you have your areas of focus you can look at more granular metrics to gather more context on the points of friction. 

• Scroll maps: Are users missing key information as it’s placed below the fold?  
• Click maps: Where are people clicking? Where are they not clicking? 
• Traffic analysis: What traffic source(s) are driving users to that page? What is the split between new and returning? 
• Usability testing: What do users that fit your target audience think of these pages? What helps them? What doesn’t help? 
• Competitor analysis: How do your competitors present themselves? How do they tackle the same issues you face?

Each research method has its pros and cons. Keep in mind the hierarchy of evidence. The hierarchy is visually depicted as a pyramid, with the lowest-quality research methods (having the highest risk of bias) at the bottom of the pyramid and the highest-quality methods (with the lowest risk of bias) at the top. When reviewing your findings place more importance on findings that come from research methods at the top of the pyramid, e.g. previous A/B test findings, than research methods that come at the bottom (e.g. competitor analysis).

Step 2 – Prioritise areas that should be redesigned 

Once you have gathered your data and prioritised your findings based on quality of evidence you should be able to see which areas you should focus on first. You should also have an idea of how you might want to improve them. This is where the fun part comes in, and you can start brainstorming ideas. Collaboration is key here to ensure a range of potential solutions are considered. Try and get the perspective of designers, developers, and key stakeholders. Not only will you discover more ideas, but you will also save time as everyone will have context on the changes. 

 It’s not only about design. A common mistake people make when doing a redesign is purely focussing on design and making the page look ‘prettier’, and not changing the content. Through research, you should have identified content that performs well and content that could do with an update. Make sure you consider this when brainstorming.

Step 3 – Pilot your redesign through a prototype 

It can be tempting once you’ve come up with great ideas to go ahead and launch it. Even if you are certain this new page will perform miles better than the original, you’d be surprised how often you’re wrong. Before you go ahead and invest a lot of time and money into building your new page,  it’s a good idea to get some outside opinions from your target audience. The quickest way to do this is to build a prototype and get users to feedback on it through user testing. See what their attention is drawn to, if there’s anything on the page they don’t like or think is missing. It’s much quicker to make these changes before launching than after. 

Step 4 – A/B test your redesign to know with statistical certainty whether your redesign performs better

Now you have done all this work conducting research, defining problem statements, coming up with hypotheses, ideating solutions and getting feedback, you want to see if your solution actually works better!

However, do not make the mistake of jumping straight into launching on your website. Yes it will be quicker, but you will never be able to quantify the difference all of that work has made to your key metrics. You may see conversion rate increase, but how do you know that is due to the redesign and nothing else (e.g. a marketing campaign or special offer deployed around the same time)? Or worse, you see conversion rate decrease and automatically assume it must be down to the redesign when in fact it’s not.  

With an A/B test you can rule out outside noise. For simplicity, imagine the scenario where you have launched your redesign, in reality it made no difference, but due to a successful marketing campaign around the same time you saw an increase in conversion rate. If you had launched your redesign as an A/B test, you would see no difference between the control and the variant, as both would have been equally affected by the marketing campaign. 

This is why it is crucial you A/B test your redesign. Not only will you be able to quantify the difference your redesign has made, you will be able to tell whether that change is statistically significant. This means you will know the probability that the change you have seen is due to the test rather than random chance. This can help minimize the risk that redesigns often bring.  

Once you have your results you can then choose whether you want to launch the redesign to 100% of users, which you can do through the testing tool whilst you wait for the changes to be hardcoded. As the redesign has already been built for the A/B test, hardcoding it should be a lot quicker!

Step 5 – Evaluative research to validate how your redesign performs 

Research shouldn’t stop once the redesign has been launched. We recommend conducting post-launch analysis to evaluate how it performs over time. This especially helps measure metrics that have a longer lead time, such as returns or cancellations.

Redesigns are susceptible to visitor bias, as rolling out a completely different experience can be shocking and uncomfortable for your returning visitors. They are also susceptible to novelty effects, where users can react more positively just because something looks new and shiny. In either case, these effects will wear off with time. That’s why it’s important to monitor performance after it’s deployment.

Things to look out for: 

• Bounce rate 
• On-page metrics (scroll rate, click-throughs, heatmap, mouse tracking) 
• Conversion rate 
• Funnel progression 
• Difference in performance for new vs. returning users 

Redesigns are all about preparation. It may seem thorough, but it should be with such a big change. If you follow the right process you could dramatically increase sales and conversions, but if done wrong you may have wasted some serious time, effort and money. Don’t skimp on the research and keep a user-centred approach and you could create a website your audience loves.

If you want to find out more about how a redesign worked with a real customer of AB Tasty’s and REO – take a look at this webinar where La Redoute details how they tested the new redesign of their site and sought continuous improvement.

The post How to Rebrand Your Site Using Experimentation in 5 Easy Steps appeared first on abtasty.

We want to give our customers ideas for winning CRO strategies and we are going to do it with an added Christmas cheer! Implementing successful digital strategies can drive conversions, enhance user experience, and ultimately lead to a thriving online presence during the busiest times of the year.

The influx of online traffic during the holiday season demands a seamless and engaging website to keep and convert visitors into customers. In this webinar, we’ll delve into the significance of a top-notch digital presence and how it directly impacts sales and customer satisfaction. Additionally, we’ll showcase real-life success stories from our clients, giving the benefits of using winning strategies.

We are joined Alex Dyson from Merkle – a global data-driven performance marketing agency renowned for its expertise in customer relationship management, analytics, and digital marketing strategies.

We’ll look at how changing online behavior means you need to change your CRO strategy, with insights from the Luxury sector as well as predictions for 2024!

Join us as we share our winning client stories from Merkle and AB Tasty in order to make sure that you have a winning CX strategy!

The post 5 Winning CRO Strategies for the Holiday Season appeared first on abtasty.

Ruben de Boer is a lead CRO Manager and consultant with over 14 years of experience in data and optimization. At Online Dialogue, Ruben leads the Conversion Managers team, developing team skills and quality as well as setting the team strategy and goals. He spreads his knowledge far both as a teacher with Udemy with over 12,000 students and as a public speaker on topics such as experimentation, change management, CRO and personal growth.

In 2019, Ruben founded his company, Conversion Ideas, where he helps people kick start their career in Conversion Rate Optimization and Experimentation by providing affordable, high-quality online courses and a number of resources.

AB Tasty’s VP Marketing Marylin Montoya spoke with Ruben about exciting trends and evolutions within the world of experimentation, including  the various ways AI can impact the optimization of the experimentation process. Ruben also shares ways to involve cross-functional teams to implement a successful culture of experimentation within the organization and why it’s important to steer these teams towards an outcome- rather than an output-driven mindset.

Here are some key takeaways from their conversation. 

The goal should always be outcome-driven

Based on his experience, Ruben believes that one of the biggest pitfalls companies face when trying to kick start their experimentation journey is they focus more on outputs rather than outcomes.

“When a company is still very much in an output mindset, meaning we have to deliver an X amount of sprint points per sprint and we have to release so many new features this year, then of course experimentation can be seen as something that slows it down, right?  Let’s say as a rule of thumb, 25% of A/B tests or experiments result in a winner and so 75% of what was built will not be released, which means the manager does not get the output goals.”

In this scenario, experimentation becomes an obstacle that slows down these outputs. Whereas, when a company shifts towards an outcome mindset, it makes more sense to run experiments with the goal to create more value for the customer. With an outcome-mindset, teams embrace experimentation with customers at the heart of the process.

When teams are more outcome-oriented, the product is based more on research and experiments instead of a fixed long-term roadmap. According to Ruben, it’s vital that companies adopt such a way of working as it helps create better products and business outcomes, which ultimately helps them maintain their competitive advantage.

Importance of cross-functional teams

Ruben argues that experimentation is maturing in that it’s becoming more embedded within product teams.

He notes there’s a rising trend of different teams working together, which Ruben believes is essential for knowledge sharing when it comes to learning new things about the customer journey and the product itself. For Ruben, this helps create an ideal, healthy experimentation environment for teams to experiment better and get the results they want. 

Ideally, there would be experts in experimentation coming in from different teams sharing knowledge, ideas and insights on a regular basis which helps drive inspiration and innovation when it comes to future test ideas. 

The recipe behind the success of these experimentation teams varies and depends on the maturity of the experimentation program and the skills of these teams.  

This could start with a look into the culture of the organization by sending questionnaires to various teams to understand their work process and how autonomous they are. This analysis would also help teams to understand what their current state of experimentation is like such as how accepting they are of experimentation. This helps to devise a strategy and roadmap to successfully implement a culture of experimentation throughout the whole organization.  

This culture scan also helps determine the maturity of an experimentation program.

“Process, data, team, scope, alignment, and company culture: that’s what I generally look at when I assess the maturity of an organization. Is there a CRO specialist throughout the different product teams? How’s decision-making being done by leadership? Is it based on the HIPPO decisions or fully based on experimentation? Then there’s the outcome versus output mindset, the scope and alignment of experimentation as well as the structure of the team- is it just a single CRO specialist or a multidisciplinary team? What does the process look like? Is it just a single CRO process or is it a process embedded in a project team?” Ruben says.

A world of possibilities with AI

With the advent of AI technology, Ruben believes there’s a lot of possibilities with what can be done with it, particularly in the experimentation process. 

While he admits it’s still too early to speculate and that there are also the many privacy concerns that come with such technology, he believes AI can bring a lot of exciting things in the future.

“It would be so nice to have an AI go over experiments on the product detail page with all the results and all the learnings, and just ask the AI, what did I actually learn and what would be good follow up experiments on that? And that would be enormously interesting to have an AI run through all the experiments in the database,” Ruben says.

Therefore, Ruben admits there are a number of possibilities of what teams can do when it comes to designing experiments and saving time and steps in the experimentation process. 

“And just think about maybe three or four years from now, everyone will just have an AI app on their phone and say, I need to buy this and I will buy it for you. And maybe a website with only AI apps on it to purchase stuff, who knows? And then optimization becomes very different all of a sudden.” 

There’s also significant potential with AI when it comes to changing the way people work as well as provide inspiration and ultimately optimize and bring innovation to the experimentation process.

“Maybe based on all the input we give from chat logs, social media channels, reviews, surveys, we can make the AI behave like a user at some point in the future somewhere, which you then don’t have to run user tests anymore because you just let AI see your website.”

What else can you learn from our conversation with Ruben de Boer?

• Evolving trends in experimentation 
• His take on change management to help organizations adopt experimentation
• His own experiences with building cross-functional teams
• How to tackle resistance when it comes to experimentation   

About Ruben de Boer

With over 14 years of experience as a lead CRO manager and consultant in data and optimization, Ruben is a two-time winner in the Experimentation Elite Awards 2023 and a best-selling instructor on Udemy with over 12,000 students. He is also a public speaker on topics such as experimentation culture, change management, conversion rate optimization, and personal growth. Today, Ruben is the Lead Conversion Manager responsible for leading the Conversion Managers team, developing team skills and quality, setting the team strategy and goals, and business development.

About 1,000 Experiments Club

The 1,000 Experiments Club is an AB Tasty-produced podcast hosted by Marylin Montoya, CMO at AB Tasty. Join Marylin and the Marketing team as they sit down with the most knowledgeable experts in the world of experimentation to uncover their insights on what it takes to build and run successful experimentation programs.

The post Taking an Outcome-Driven Approach | Ruben de Boer appeared first on abtasty.

The fact is, the cost of poor customer experience is high. According to a PWC survey, a third of consumers would stop using a brand they love after just one negative interaction.

In this article, we look at some common EXO challenges businesses face and strategies to overcome them, including practical insights for enhancing the digital customer experience. By implementing these strategies, you can ensure your business takes a customer-centric approach to optimizing the customer experience and building brand loyalty.

What is customer experience optimization?

Customer experience optimization refers to everything your business does to improve the customer’s experience at every touchpoint of their journey. It entails deeply understanding your customer’s needs and preferences and leveraging these insights to develop strategies to improve their interactions with your brand.

In today’s digital landscape, customers are flooded with choices across most categories of products and services. As a result, if you fail to deliver a positive experience, your customers will simply switch to a competing brand. EXO strategies are designed to keep customers satisfied and engaged, build brand loyalty, and reduce churn.

With EXO, it’s essential to deliver an experience that surpasses customers’ expectations and provides them with a seamless experience across all touchpoints and channels, including websites, mobile apps, social media accounts, and email.

Why customer experience optimization is important for business growth

First and foremost, EXO streamlines the customer’s path to purchase. Offering customers a frictionless, positive journey that makes it easy for them to get the information they need to make their purchase decision increases the likelihood of a successful transaction.

Customer EXO is also an ideal way to foster brand loyalty. Customers who have a superior experience with your brand are more likely to become repeat buyers. In fact, Deloitte research shows that a high-quality customer experience makes a customer 2.7 times more likely to keep buying from a business than a low-quality experience. Not only are customers likely to return, but they will also pay up to 16% more for an optimized experience, depending on the product category.

Positive experiences also trigger word-of-mouth recommendations, enhancing your brand’s reputation. Recommendations don’t entail the same acquisition costs as traditional marketing methods, making EXO a comparatively cost-effective way to boost sales and expand your customer base.

Challenges and solutions to customer experience optimization

We recognize there are challenges associated with EXO that may prevent you from delivering the best possible experience to your customers. Here are some strategies for tackling these challenges.

Compiling the right data for accurate measurements

Thanks to the various technologies available, we can now access a wealth of customer data. If interpreted and applied correctly, this data offers invaluable insights into the customer experience and ways of enhancing it. However, the sheer volume of these metrics can lead to information overload. It’s easy to get distracted or focus on the wrong metrics, including pitfall metrics that result in misinformed conclusions when considered in isolation. Some metrics, like cost of sale or cross-sell, don’t offer any meaningful insights into EXO.

The solution is to prioritize the metrics that matter. These include:

• Customer satisfaction (CSAT)
• Churn rates
• Bounce rates
• Customer retention rates
• Trust ratings, conversion rates
• Customer journey analytics
• Repeat purchases
• Customer segmentation
• Buyer personas
• Customer lifetime value (CLV)
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Keep in mind that this data may reside in various departments across your organization, extending beyond sales, marketing and customer service teams. Consolidating this disparate data is essential to gaining a complete and accurate picture of customer experience in your organization.

Developing the right hypothesis

Experimentation is a powerful tool for delivering an optimal customer experience. However, randomly choosing hypotheses to test is a quick route to overlooking optimization opportunities. For example, simply changing the location of the checkout button in response to low conversion rates may not address the underlying issue.

Effective experimentation requires a considered approach to develop the correct hypothesis to test. The first step is identifying the genuine problem that needs addressing. You can then formulate a hypothesis to test to uncover the root cause of the issue and identify a concrete solution.

This second step requires a critical analysis of your current site and potential improvements from the customers’ perspective. Sourcing a range of data, including web analytics, user tests, and customer feedback, can help guide your analysis. You should also consider the psychology of the prospective customer. Getting in their mindset can guide you toward potential solutions.

If we continue with our checkout button example, the core issue may extend beyond conversion rates to a more specific concern: high cart abandonment rates. A hypothesis with a potential solution to this issue may be: “Many customers exit the checkout process at step 5. Reducing the number of steps in our checkout process will reduce cart abandonment rates.” Crafting the right hypothesis is a crucial step in optimizing customer experience.

Resource constraints

Ideally, businesses would have unlimited resources to optimize customer experiences. However, in reality, EXO usually competes with numerous other business priorities, all vying for time, human, and financial resources. Investing in the infrastructure and technology for EXO can be costly. Hiring and retaining people with the necessary skills to implement effective optimization strategies can also be challenging. Data availability is another common resource issue, especially for businesses with lower website traffic who feel they need more information for optimization.

The good news is you can tailor your approach to EXO to align with your business’s circumstances. This includes starting with smaller-scale initiatives and expanding your efforts as your optimization strategies gain traction or more resources become available. Another option is to outsource EXO by engaging the services of a specialist customer optimization agency.

It’s also important to note that high-volume website traffic isn’t a prerequisite for identifying and implementing effective EXO strategies. While a 95% confidence level is often cited as the magic number for drawing meaningful conclusions from your data, you can still optimize websites with less traffic by lowering the threshold. Focusing on optimizing the top of the funnel, where there may be greater opportunities for EXO, is another useful strategy for low-traffic websites.

Related: How to Deal with Low Traffic in CRO

ROI tunnel vision

When a company works on improving EXO, its main focus is often on immediate ROI in experimentation, sometimes at the expense of other important metrics. While the bottom line is relevant to any business strategy, focusing solely on the financial outcomes of EXO can lead to short-sighted decision-making, jeopardizing longer-term sustainability.

Prioritizing immediate revenue gain above all else can negatively impact the customer experience. It makes it almost impossible for an organization to adopt a customer-centric approach, a fundamental requirement for EXO.

Experimentation isn’t always neatly quantifiable. Experiments are typically run within complex contexts and are influenced by various factors. While measuring ROI may be a criterion when assessing the success of your EXO strategies, it should never be the primary or sole one. Instead, shift your focus to the broader impacts of experimentation, like its contribution to better, more informed decision-making.

Not knowing what your customers want

A customer-centric approach is vital to delivering an optimal customer experience. This requires an in-depth understanding of who your customers are, their needs and preferences, and precisely how they interact with your business. Without these insights, you’re in the dark about what your customers want and when they want it. Meeting—let alone exceeding—customers’ expectations is impossible.

Customer wants and needs are as diverse as your customer base. They may include a desire for higher levels of personalization, seamless online interactions, flexible payment methods, faster customer support, better pricing, transparency or increased mobile responsiveness. What customers want also evolves as their journey progresses. If your EXO strategies fail to align with your customers’ desires at the right time, they are unlikely to succeed.

While there are several ways to uncover customer needs and wants, one of the most effective methods is to go directly to the source. Collecting customer feedback at each stage of their journey—via surveys, feedback management systems, voice of customers, and user interviews—lets you tailor your EXO strategies and deliver the improvements your customers truly want.

Lack of customer experience optimization tools

Successful EXO relies on quality data for insights into your customers’ journeys, needs, and preferences. To achieve this, you need the right tools to capture and analyze accurate data in real-time across multiple channels.

These tools include:

• CRM systems to track historical customer behavior and relationships
• Customer feedback and survey software to collect individual feedback for deep insights into what your customers want
• Behavior analytics tools to interpret your customers’ interactions and identify opportunities to improve their experience
• Experience optimization platforms, like AB Tasty, to design and deliver digital omnichannel customer experiences via experimentation

It’s important to review the needs of your EXO strategy and the available tools to choose the ones that best align with your customers’ and business’s needs.

How to improve the digital customer experience

• Observe user behavior patterns

A robust data foundation lets you observe and understand customer behavior individually and identify broader trends. This information serves as a compass, guiding your EXO efforts.

Customer insights may reveal common pain points. For example, a frequently searched term may highlight a topic customers want more information on. These insights also help you understand how users interact with your site, how that impacts their journey, and potential improvements. Is there a particular page where customers spend a lot of time? Do they have to navigate back and forth between pages to find the details they need?

Behavior patterns also reveal customer preferences, allowing you to personalize touchpoints within their journey and identify what triggers customers to complete their purchases. These insights serve as a powerful foundation for developing EXO strategies and hypotheses for A/B testing.

• Create a journey map to understand the user flow

EXO involves optimizing every customer interaction with your business. A common pitfall to avoid when addressing EXO is approaching it narrowly from a specific touchpoint rather than considering the entire customer journey. A holistic approach delivers more impactful insights that help you manage the root causes of negative or neutral customer experiences.

A great way to understand your user flow and how it affects customer experience is to create a journey map, setting out every touchpoint during the buying process. Navigate your website like a potential customer, systematically stepping through the user journey and noting your findings.

Putting yourself in the customer’s shoes ensures you don’t overlook opportunities to optimize customer experience. This approach can also help you prioritize measures that make the user journey frictionless, improving customer experience and your site’s performance.

• Develop a roadmap and set parameters to measure success

The list of available EXO measures is endless. Aligning your strategy with your business objectives requires a considered approach to implementation. To do this, develop a roadmap that outlines your goals, priorities and milestones.

A well-structured roadmap gives your team clear direction and deadlines while guiding decision-making to ensure the greatest impact on customer experience. Everyone understands their role, guaranteeing accountability in the execution of your EXO strategy. It also helps you prioritize initiatives and allocate the necessary resources, including EXO tools.

In your roadmap, you can list the specific metrics and KPIs to measure and track your progress. Doing this allows you to evaluate your EXO measures, readjust those not delivering results, and build on particularly effective ones.

• Experiment and re-challenge your past experiments

You’re unlikely to unlock the secret to EXO in your organization on the first try. Instead, you’ll need to run continuous experiments using different hypotheses to find the right combination of strategies that work for your business.

The customer experience is dynamic and your EXO strategies should be equally adaptable. Continue to review your previous experiments to see what more you can learn from them, especially in terms of customer preferences. This process enables you to identify emerging opportunities for improvement and further refine the measures with the most impact to deliver an optimal customer experience.

Customer-centric EXO

Acknowledging that your business must prioritize customer EXO is just the beginning. By understanding the customer experience definition, common EXO challenges, and practical strategies to overcome them, you have the tools to deliver a consistently superior customer experience. By integrating a customer-centric ethos with your EXO strategies, you’ll not only strengthen current customer relationships but also cultivate enduring brand loyalty.

The post Overcoming the Challenges of Customer Experience Optimization (EXO): Strategies and Tips appeared first on abtasty.