During 2018, a collective shift in mindsets across multiple sectors and industries revealed a prevailing theme: Prioritizing the customer experience. By putting customers at the forefront of every decision, organizations are reshaping their business strategies so that everything is designed around solving customer challenges.
The result: Increased trust and brand loyalty.
In 2019, how can we continue to place the customer experience at the heart of digital transformation? There are a few tactics to include in your digital marketing strategy that will assure consumer satisfaction.
2019 customer experience predictions: Improving UX will be crucial
“By 2020, customers will manage 85% of the relationship with an enterprise without ever interacting with a human.”
B2B buyers are demanding Amazon-level sophistication when it comes to user experience. From customized features to advanced searching, to self-service options and design, today there is simply little margin for error in the realm of UX.
How quickly does your site load? How easy is it to navigate and understand the site? If your UX/UI is lagging, prioritize this project in 2019.
Buyers today have little patience and lots of options – if your user experience can’t meet their expectations right away, they will take their business elsewhere.
Assess your site. See where functionality may be meeting or failing your customers by measuring how your site stacks up against best practices and industry standards. You can also pull data on user behavior and take note of where customers-drop off. From there, conduct research: customer interviews, a competitive landscape analysis, and more.
Use these insights to improve usability and create a leading customer experience that exceeds expectations.
Know thy customer: Design and implement a meaningful SEO strategy
“About ⅓ of today’s buyers rely on blogs before making a purchase.”
Your potential customers are doing research online. Why not delight this audience by being their trusted source of information? It’s a win-win strategy, because in order to appeal to the largest audience your brand could potentially reach, you need a solid SEO strategy. And a solid SEO strategy requires thoughtful content.
Start with an SEO audit and keyword analysis. Learn what words and phrases your customers are searching online – and what your competitors are bidding on to win the audiences’ clicks. Once you know what terms should be included on your site, a digital advisory can help you capitalize on these findings – or you can do it yourself in-house. Using meta descriptions, canonical tags, and submitting your sitemap are a few ways to ensure your site is ranked high.
Thoughtful and authentic content on the blog that generates lots of clicks (and link-backs) is another way to boost your credibility, both in the eyes of your customers and Google.
By the time you finish reading this subheading, you may have lost a customer: Optimize your mobile sites in 2019
“Over 50% of mobile buyers will abandon a website if it doesn’t load in 3 seconds.”
Three seconds – that’s not much time, right? And yet, for buyers today, it’s an eternity when it comes to website responsiveness.
Like it or not, the majority of buyers are researching and purchasing products from their smartphones. Your website and e-commerce platform should be optimized for mobile – meaning it’s responsive, streamlined, and user-friendly – in order to leverage this e-commerce channel.
First, you’ll want to drive traffic to your mobile site – which dovetails into your SEO strategy, and potentially a paid advertising campaign.
Next, the goal is to convert your audience into buyers. How is this accomplished? Think about how a mobile transaction is different than buying online via desktop devices. Mobile screens are smaller, internet or data connections can be slower, and your user is on-the-go, and probably more impatient than ever.
A seamless, personalized, and simple mobile site is the best way to drive conversions. Consider eliminating sidebars or browser caches – things that will slow the experience down unnecessarily. Reduce the amount of clicking – perhaps users can “add-to-cart” from the results page versus having to click into the product.
Any way that you can simplify the mobile experience will result in a better customer experience.
Wondering how else your business can leverage digital marketing to create great customer experience that drive revenue? Take this complimentary digital marketing assessment. Whether your company is considering or has embarked on its digital transformation journey, this assessment will instantly rank your digital marketing performance.
