If you want to catch up on last weeks blog, we discussed how to improve site speed for SEO, your customer engagement strategy and the latest from Ads.txt. This week we have a new roundup from the world of digital marketing, that covers:
Glomex, the Global Media Exchange service that launched a year ago in Germany has now launched in the UK. Providing a service that is industry leading, revenue raising and that offers quality premium content for end users, Glomex wanted to bring its services to Britain – the largest market in Europe.
Over €14 billion were spent on advertising in 2016 in Britain, which is almost three times the size of the market in Germany. Glomex’s Managing Director UK/VP International Sales, Dominic Barry, sees the potential for Glomex for content owners, publishers and advertisers in the UK. Barry noted that,
“The industry is in a current state of war – and this ‘war for eyeballs’ is affecting how content is distributed and received. For a video provider, this means that content has to be short and succinct and it has to be delivered worldwide in the blink of an eye.”
He goes on to explain that,
“The user won’t go looking for content, it has to find them. So what the online video business needs is a new video ecosystem which gives viable alternatives, where content can be traded in a free and fair way. A marketplace without minimum guarantees and setup costs, an intuitive and immediate field allowing for a better viewing and advertising experience.”
Stay tuned.
The Confederation of British Industry has released its latest figures which show that the growth of UK retail sales has declined at its fastest pace in over a year. Retail businesses are often amongst the first to be affected by rising inflation, however, there are some cost effective social media marketing tactics that small retailers can use to promote their businesses.
Start by understanding which social media platforms your target audience uses the most, and what type of content resonates most with them. To get a feel of this, review your competitors’ social profiles and note the level of engagement from their audience each platform receives.
As a general rule, Facebook is best suited for overall brand awareness and its heterogeneous user base makes it suitable to promote almost any type of product. Instagram is a good choice for retailers whose target audience is young adults and whose content is particularly visual. Pinterest is a great platform to reach women, especially for clothing or jewellery brands. Twitter is dialogue heavy, bringing real-time information and insights which can be harnessed to create engaging and successful campaigns. During your research, be sure to note the tone and type of content that gets the most response, as this will greatly inform your own strategy.
Communication rather than promotion should be your company’s mantra when it comes to social media – make it your mission to create content that will drive conversation. Make sure to adapt your content to the audience and platform, use images and media wherever possible and create a clear call to action.
Facebook Live is a wonderful platform for small retailers, with live streams typically receiving 10x as many comments as pre-recorded videos. Streaming product demonstrations or tutorials or even introducing your viewers to your staff and retail space is an engaging and personal way to use social media to turn followers into buyers.
Both Facebook and Instagram provide their users with a quick, easy and convenient experience, so using these two platforms can nudge a follower into a customer. Facebook’s in-store and online offers can drive customers to your business, as they can easily access the offer through their phone whilst at the till or to enter a code online. There is the option to include a QR code at the checkout which will make the process even quicker and easier – and Facebook will send a reminder to those who have expressed interest in your promotion when it is going to expire.
Instagram has shoppable posts which provide customers with itemised product descriptions, which allows for well-informed and efficient purchases without the customer ever leaving the app. Instagram does not take a cut from transaction that occur through their platform, making it a great option for a small business – Instagram simply offers the opportunity to pay to show shoppable posts to non-followers.
A small business’ success is down to its convenience and high levels of customer service, according to research by Liberis, and this needs to continue through into your online activities as well as offline. Good social media etiquette – such as responding to comments and messages, both positive and negative, in under 24 hours – is a good place to start, however it goes further than this.
Once someone has clicked through from a social media platform to your website, it needs to provide an efficient, easy-to-use and informative experience. Remove any error messages, ensure that your content is high quality, free of errors and up-to-date, the design should be professional with high quality images and it should be mobile optimised. A positive online experience that engages an audience will have a great impact the amount of traffic at both the online and offline checkouts…
So now you know.
Traditional e-Commerce is being quickly outpaced by e-Commerce mobile apps, with apps driving 52% of all mobile transactions and converting 20% more than desktop. Mobile commerce is expected to grow at a rate that is 300% faster than traditional e-Commerce, so retailers are beginning to focus more and more on moving their resources towards mobile and apps.
With that being the case, there is a lot of pressure on your mobile app performing properly, so we have compiled a list of KPIs to ensure that your app is working well for you…
There is a lot of information to collate when getting to grips with the efficiency of your app, however there is a solution in Appsee. The market leader in qualitative app analytics, Appsee effectively measures each of the above KPIs, giving user recording and touch heatmaps to allow you to clearly identify, understand and resolve your app issues.
Crafting your mobile site or app so that it is deemed user-friendly and efficient is one of the most important things you can do to improve your conversion. People can only buy something that they can find, so search is a fundamental mobile activity, and should therefore be at the top of your list of priorities when building a profitable app or site.
To help your users find what they are looking for in a quick and easy way, start by having a prominently displayed search field. The search field is vital, and having a discrete search bar will create user frustration, so make the search bar prominent on your page. E-Commerce apps should feature the search bar at the top of their home screen, and if the home page is long then it is advised to repeat it again at the bottom. If your app has a huge inventory then it may even be best to display the search field by default as this will ensure its visibility and convenience.
Always accompany your search field with the icon of the magnifying glass – the universally recognised icon will only improve the visibility of your search function. Make sure to use a schematic icon, as the simplest version of the magnifying glass will increase its recognition.
The search function requires the user to come up with a query, and to then type it – which is error prone and time consuming, particularly on a mobile device. To reduce the effort required from the individual user, consider including auto-suggestions. Providing useful and helpful suggestions, this mechanism can help users to find a proper query – and a successful search result – by trying to predict their search based on the entered characters.
Though auto-suggestions have the potential to be useful to the consumer, poorly designed auto-suggestions can have the opposite effect, confusing and distracting users with irrelevant results. Use a spelling auto-correction, as well as recognition of root words and predictive text in order to improve the tool.
Also make sure to include the recent searches, so that the user saves times and effort in searching for the same item again. Apps should store all interactions, including recent searches and purchases, so that they can provide this information the next time the user conducts a search.
In an ideal world, your search results would be displayed immediately, however, if this is impossible then you should provide a proper visual feedback. For delays of over 1 second you should attempt to make the wait more pleasant. Lazy loading is a technique that means that some results are displayed whilst the others are being loaded – this means the page loads quickly because very few products are loaded initially. For this technique it is often a better idea to show the text of the products before the images, so that the user can start to scan the page for their target product whilst waiting for the images to load.
As mobile screens are more compact, it means that there are a limited number of results that can be displayed before the user has to scroll down. Ensure that the user sees a small number, say 3-5, of highly relevant results before they must scroll. A Baymard Institute study noted that more than 50% of mobile e-Commerce users tried to ‘search within’ their currently navigated category path, so it is a good idea to design your e-Commerce site to support this behaviour.
Giving filtering and sorting options will help to further narrow down the search results, meaning that excessive scrolling or pagination is avoided, which is important when considering that the user is searching on a small screen.
A “No Results” page is an opportunity to make a sale or provide further options to your customers, so avoid having a blank “No Results” page. If a search does not come up with any matching products offer the user some valuable alternatives, such as products from a similar category, or employ an ‘intelligent search’ feature that covers singular, plurals and misspellings.
Having a menu that has clear and defined categories will greatly improve the user’s search, providing a more user-friendly experience and a quicker path to the right product. The golden rule is that your menu categories should not overlap, as this causes confusion and frustration.
Search is a multifaceted subject, however it has never been more important to get it right, with 30% of all online shopping purchases happening on mobile devices. When retailers provide a frictionless mobile retail experience, consumers are much more likely to make a purchase…
READ MORE: The Ultimate Guide to eCommerce UX Design
Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are expected to grow into a $95 billion market by 2025 according to a recent estimate by Goldman Sachs. As tech giants continue to invest and acquire these technologies, it is expected that AR and VR will become more and more integrated with the platform through which we consume content – particularly seeing as Facebook is one of those companies with a huge interest in AR/VR, having bought Oculus in 2016, and having gone on to purchase 11 AR/VR companies since.
“We’ve effectively had the same flat screen medium since 1896. VR/AR uniquely provides a sense of presence and immersion, it’s a brand new art form and brand new form of experiencing,” says Eugene Chung, Founder and CEO of Penrose Studios.
Users will no longer passively view content, instead they will be placed within it – finding themselves at the centre of the experience.
On top of re-imagining how users receive content, VR/AR can be used in ‘virtual prototyping’, which can save huge amounts of time and money during product development stages. One design firm passed $50,000 of savings to a client in the aeronautics industry by using VR to effectively prototype their designs. Jeffrey Powers, co-Founder and CEO of Occipital, notes that,
“You can iterate on your city plan, your home and your construction worksite many more times before you actually start to dig or make a change. As a result, we’re going to get better creations.”
We can also expect to see that, much like the smartphone made photography more affordable and accessible, the immersive technologies of VR and AR will have the same effect for small firms or independent makers, meaning that they can produce high quality content at a lower cost.
It is often remarked that digital media can cause a decline in empathy, however many people working with VR and AR feel that it will have to opposite effect, becoming, “the ultimate empathy machine”. According to Lynette Wallworth, an artist and film director, AR and VR, “provide a layer of authenticity of experience” that is not offered by other mediums, which may allow audiences to feel closer to the subject, increasing levels of empathy and emotional resonance.
The demand for freelancers with VR expertise grew far faster than the demand for any other skill in Q2 of 2017, with a 30-fold year-on-year increase. It is predicted that demand will greatly outstrip supply in this area, so governments would do well to quickly develop schemes and funds to create a talent pool in the VR/AR field.
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