To design user experiences that actually convert in the age of distraction, Scott Shillinglaw, Senior Digital Product Manager at Koala, lives by three words – less is more. 

At CX Circle Sydney, Scott reflects on how embracing simplicity helped the team improve engagement and conversion metrics. He also talked about removing a feature they thought would help, but didn’t. 

Scott shares his three essential tips on designing user experiences that can help convert even the most distracted users. 

1. Too much information might be hindering conversion

When we design user experiences, we often add more features and information, thinking that we’re helping our users by providing them everything they need to guide them to checkout. 

After all, more must be better, right? 

However, this sometimes unintentionally creates complexity in the user journey. Too much information can lead to cognitive overload, distracting people from taking the next step toward purchase. 

How Koala’s delivery tracker widget looked like before checkout

The problem was, Koala’s delivery checker was solving a problem for the business. Customers had logistics-related questions, and having delivery details shown upfront saved Koala’s customer service team time handling these inquiries. 

Consulting Contentsquare, Scott and his team found people spent an average of 43 seconds on Koala’s website across all page groups — not enough time to sell a visitor on a high-end furniture product emotionally. Having more information could hamper the decision-making process. 

The Koala product team A/B tested moving the delivery checker widget later in the funnel, and found that this improved add-to-cart, conversion rates, and checkout stats: 

Information overload is real, and removing distractions for your visitors can give them a better experience.

2. Test your assumptions 

Conventional e-commerce wisdom says cross-selling helps to increase your average order value (AOV). 

It’s worked for businesses like Costco and B&Q.

But unlike Costco, Koala’s luxury furniture wasn’t the type (most) people bought on a whim. An average basket size of $1000 meant slower purchase decisions over a few days. 

If you’re spending a thousand dollars, a few hundred more on a recommended item isn’t chump change. Therefore, was a cross-sell widget a good fit for Koala’s UX and selection of high-end products? 

The team used A/B testing and Contentsquare’s Zoning Analysis’s click metrics to validate their assumptions. In the Japan market, they focused on only cross-selling super-relevant and discounted products, improving year-on-year cross-sell rates by 16-20% 

Once again, applying the less is more principle helped Koala improve add-to-cart rates and order completions, bringing in over AUD 350k incremental revenue per quarter.  

3. You can’t learn if you don’t fail 

When to comes to experimentation, it’s better to fail a few times than to always succeed. To walk the talk, Scott’s team removed a feature that they thought would be helpful but wasn’t. 

At Koala, visitors usually have a multi-session purchase journey. After seeing a product on the Koala website for the first time, they’ll take a few days to research product reviews and competing products.

Consulting Contentsquare, Scott and his team saw apparent differences in how people browsed the website depending on where they were on their decision journey. 

The team hypothesized shorter buying processes would help conversions. They developed a ‘favorites’ feature for customers to save products they were interested in, making it easier for customers to continue the buying journey. 

But after deployment, they realised that people weren’t using the feature as much as they thought. There was in fact, minimal impact on add-to-cart, order completion, or revenue metrics, which led the team to removing the feature. 

The learning? Even though you thought something was going to be useful for users, always listen to the data and always put your users first. 

3 user experience tips from Scott on designing for simplicity in a chaotic digital world 

1. More information doesn’t always work for people with short attention spans: Too much information at the wrong stage of the customer journey can be detrimental to UX and business metrics. Ask yourself if the information is necessary, and always A/B test to validate your assumptions. 
2. Review and test your assumptions at least once a month. Questioning if conventional e-commerce best practices applied to Koala uncovered hidden opportunities for improvement. 
3. Embrace failure and be ready to kill your darlings:  Sometimes things just don’t work as expected, and that’s okay! Either iterate or prepare to kill the feature if people don’t find it helpful or if there’s no significant impact on your usage metrics. 

If you couldn’t attend CX Circle Sydney, don’t worry because we’ve got you covered. You can catch all sessions on demand here. 

The post How Koala adopts simplicity in their UX and product design appeared first on Contentsquare.

The primary objective of UX Design Analytics is to enhance the user experience by identifying and addressing the users’ needs, ultimately leading to increased user satisfaction and engagement. The application of analytics in UX Design utilizes various methods and tools such as web analytics, heatmaps, user session recordings, data science techniques, and user feedback surveys. Each tool offers different types of data and insights, making them suitable for different stages of the UX Design process.

For example, heatmaps provide a visual representation of user behavior on a webpage, while user session recordings offer a more detailed view of individual user interactions.

In UX Design, the use of analytics extends beyond the digital space. For instance, retail stores can apply predictive modeling and machine learning to track customer behavior and preferences, optimizing store layout and product placement. Similarly, service providers can utilize data analysis to identify customer behavior trends, enabling the tailoring of services to meet specific customer needs and expectations.

The power of customer journey data: improving your business strategy

What is analytics design?

Analytics Design is a specialized area of UX Design that focuses on the use of data and analytics to inform design decisions. It involves the collection, analysis, and interpretation of user data, which is then used to improve the design and functionality of the product or service.

The goal of Analytics Design is to create a user-centric design that meets the needs and expectations of the users, thereby enhancing their experience and satisfaction. In the context of web design, Analytics Design may involve the use of various tools and techniques, such as web analytics, user session recordings, heatmaps, and A/B testing. These tools provide valuable insights into user behavior, preferences, and trends, which can be used to inform design decisions.

For example, heatmaps can show which areas of a webpage are most frequently interacted with by the users, while A/B testing can help determine which design variant performs better in terms of user engagement and conversion. Analytics Design is not a one-time process, but rather an ongoing cycle of data collection, analysis, design implementation, and evaluation.

This iterative process allows for continuous improvement and refinement of the design, ensuring that it remains relevant and effective in meeting the evolving needs and expectations of the users.

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Why is analytics crucial in UX design?

Analytics plays a crucial role in UX Design for several reasons.

Firstly, it provides objective data and insights into user behavior, preferences, and trends. This data can be used to inform design decisions, ensuring that the design is user-centric and meets the needs and expectations of the users.

Secondly, analytics allows for the evaluation of design performance. By tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), designers can assess the effectiveness of the design in achieving its intended goals, and make necessary adjustments if needed.

Moreover, analytics can help identify and address user pain points. By analyzing user behavior and feedback, designers can identify areas of the product or service that are causing frustration or confusion for the users, and take steps to address these issues.

This not only improves the user experience, but also increases user satisfaction and retention. Lastly, analytics can help validate design decisions. Through A/B testing and other forms of user testing, designers can compare different design variants and determine which one performs better in terms of user engagement and conversion. This not only ensures that the design is effective, but also reduces the risk of implementing a design that does not resonate with the users.

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Challenges in analytics UX design

Analytics UX design is a complex field that involves the application of data science, machine learning, and predictive modeling principles. The primary challenge in this field is the representation of large volumes of big data in an intuitive manner. This necessitates a deep understanding of data visualization principles, and the ability to translate complex data sets into easily digestible visual representations.

Another significant challenge in analytics UX design is the need for real-time data representation. In the fast-paced world of business intelligence, decision-makers require up-to-the-minute data to inform their strategic planning.

This places considerable pressure on UX designers to create interfaces that can handle real-time data feeds and present them in a manner that is both accurate and immediately understandable. Customization is another major challenge in analytics UX design. Given the unique nature of every business, UX designers need to create flexible and customizable interfaces that can accommodate a wide range of data types and structures. This requires a high degree of creativity and problem-solving skills, as well as a deep understanding of the specific needs and objectives of the end user.

Lastly, with the rise in cyber threats, UX designers must also ensure that the interfaces they create are secure, requiring a deep understanding of data encryption and cybersecurity principles.

What are the current challenges in dashboard design?

Dashboard design, a key component of analytics design, is a complex task marked by a number of challenges. The primary issue facing designers in this field is the need for simplicity and clarity in data visualization. A dashboard must present a large amount of big data in a concise and easily understandable format, avoiding unnecessary clutter and confusion. Interactivity is another major challenge in dashboard creation.

Users need to be able to interact with the data presented on the dashboard, manipulating it to suit their specific needs and objectives. This necessitates the integration of interactive elements into the information architecture of the dashboard, which can add to the complexity of the design process. The need for real-time data representation is also a significant challenge in dashboard design. In the realm of business intelligence, decision-makers require up-to-the-minute data for effective data analysis and reporting. This places considerable pressure on designers to create dashboards capable of handling real-time data feeds and presenting them accurately.

Lastly, customization is a significant challenge in dashboard creation.

Every business has unique data needs, and therefore, every dashboard must be customizable to accommodate these needs. Designers must be able to create flexible and adaptable dashboards that can handle a wide range of data types and structures, requiring a high degree of creativity and problem-solving skills.

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These tools offer a range of features for comprehensive UX analysis. Heatmaps, for example, are a form of data visualization that demonstrates user clicks, scrolls, and mouse movements, helping interaction designers identify popular areas and elements on a webpage. Session recordings offer a real-time view of user interactions, revealing potential usability issues. A/B testing features enable the comparison of different UX designs to ascertain which is more effective, thereby assisting in website optimization. UX Analytics Tools operate by tracking and analyzing user interactions with a website or app. They collect data on various metrics such as session duration, bounce rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate.

By examining these metrics, UX professionals can gain a deeper understanding of how users interact with a platform, what features they engage with, and where they encounter difficulties. This data-driven approach allows for more informed decision-making and targeted UX improvements.

Why are UX analytics tools important?

In the digital marketing landscape, UX Analytics Tools are essential.

They provide empirical evidence of user behavior, enabling businesses to make data-driven decisions. With a deeper understanding of user behavior data, businesses can tailor their digital platforms to meet user needs, thereby improving user satisfaction, engagement, and conversion rate.

Furthermore, these tools enable continuous monitoring and optimization of UX. They provide real-time data on user interactions, allowing businesses to promptly identify and address UX issues. This continuous improvement approach is essential in today’s fast-paced digital world, where user expectations and industry standards are constantly evolving. Moreover, UX Analytics Tools facilitate customer journey mapping, a more user-centric approach to design. They provide insights into what users like and dislike, what they find intuitive, and what they find confusing.

By focusing on the user, businesses can create more engaging, intuitive, and enjoyable digital experiences, setting themselves apart in the competitive digital marketplace.

What factors to consider when choosing a UX analytics tool?

When choosing a UX Analytics Tool, several factors should be considered. Firstly, the tool should provide comprehensive analytics capabilities, covering a wide range of UX metrics. It should be able to track and analyze user behavior, engagement, and conversion metrics, providing a holistic view of user experience. Usability is a critical factor. The tool should be user-friendly, with an intuitive interface and easy-to-understand reports.

It should also offer robust support and training resources to help users effectively leverage its features. Moreover, the tool should facilitate usability testing, an essential process in interaction design and website optimization. Integration capabilities are also important. The tool should easily integrate with other systems and platforms used by the business, such as CRM systems, marketing automation tools, and web analytics tools.

This will enable a more streamlined and efficient workflow.

Lastly, cost-effectiveness should be considered. While UX Analytics Tools can offer significant value, it’s important to consider the pricing model and ensure it aligns with the business’s budget and expected return on investment. This consideration is crucial in digital marketing, where budgeting and ROI are key factors.

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In-depth review of top UX analytics tools

UX analytics tools are instrumental in enhancing user experience and understanding user behavior data. This review provides an in-depth analysis of top UX analytics tools, focusing on their features, advantages, and potential drawbacks.

These insights will assist you in making an informed decision, optimizing your digital marketing strategies, and improving your website’s conversion rate. Google Analytics, a trusted tool in the realm of web analytics, offers robust capabilities for tracking user behavior data. It provides an in-depth understanding of user interaction design, tracking key metrics like bounce rate, session duration, and pages per session. Despite its comprehensive data visualization features, its complex interface may pose challenges for beginners. Conversely, Hotjar offers a more user-friendly experience with its visual representation of data through heatmaps and session recordings. However, it may not provide as detailed analytics as Google Analytics. Crazy Egg, another prominent tool in the UX analytics market, is renowned for its A/B testing capabilities.

Three UX Tips to Avoid the Snowball Effect in your Digital Experiences

This feature is integral in website optimization, allowing you to create different versions of your webpage and test them to enhance user experience. Despite its usability testing strengths, Crazy Egg may not offer the same breadth of analytics as Google Analytics. On the other hand, Clicktale provides a comprehensive view of the customer journey mapping by combining traditional web analytics with heatmaps and session recordings. However, its pricing might be a barrier for small businesses. Lastly, Kissmetrics focuses on individual user behavior over time. It tracks users across multiple devices, providing valuable insights into user journey and behavior. This focus on historical data, however, may not suit businesses seeking real-time data.

Choosing the right UX analytics tool is critical for your business’ success. It’s essential to consider your specific needs, budget, and technical expertise before making a decision. While Google Analytics offers comprehensive analytics, tools like Hotjar, Crazy Egg, and Clicktale might be more suitable for businesses looking for specific features. Meanwhile, Kissmetrics might be the best choice for those who want to focus on individual user behavior over time. By choosing the right tool, you can significantly enhance your user experience, improve your digital marketing strategies, and boost your website’s conversion rate.

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A user-friendly website is easy to use and navigate. It is essential to ensure your website is user-friendly, as this will help improve the user experience and encourage visitors to stay on your site longer.

Here are eight tips for creating a user-friendly website:

1.  Keep it simple: The design of your website should be simple and easy to understand. Use less text or graphics, as this can make your website look cluttered and difficult to navigate.

2.  Use clear and concise language: The text on your website should be clear and concise. Avoid using technical terms that your visitors may need help understanding.

3.  Use a consistent design: The design of your website should be consistent throughout. This will help to create a sense of familiarity and make your website easier to use.

4.  Use a logical navigation system: Your website should have a logical navigation system that makes it easy for visitors to find the information they are looking for. The navigation system should be easy to understand and use and consistent throughout the website.

5. Use search functionality: Your website should have search functionality that allows visitors to easily find the information they are looking for. The search functionality should be easy to use and should return relevant results.

6. Use images and videos: Images and videos can help to break up text and make your website more visually appealing. They can also help to illustrate your products or services and make them more appealing to visitors.

7. Make it mobile-friendly: More and more people are using their mobile devices. This means that it is important to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. A mobile-friendly website is one that is easy to use on a mobile device. The text should be easy to read, the images should be optimized for mobile devices, and the navigation should be easy to use.

8. Test your website: It is important to test your website to make sure that it is user-friendly. 

By following these tips, you can create a user-friendly website that will improve the user experience and encourage visitors to stay on your site longer.

Bonus Tips! 

1. Use a responsive design: A responsive design is a design that adapts to the size of the device being used. This means that your website will look good and be easy to use on all devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
2. Use a content management system (CMS): A CMS is a software application that allows you to easily create, edit, and manage the content on your website. This can save you time and money, as you will not need to hire a web developer to make changes to your website.
3. Back up your website regularly: It is important to back up your website regularly in case of a data loss or website crash. This will ensure that you do not lose any of your website’s content or data.
4. Keep your website up-to-date: It is important to keep your website up-to-date with fresh content and information. This will help to keep visitors coming back to your website.

Want to create a user-friendly website that will improve your user experience? Contentsquare can help. Our powerful tools can help you identify and fix usability issues, so your website is easy to use and navigate. Get in touch today to learn more.

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The company’s collaborative approach has paid off. Thanks in part to its close relationship with other departments, as well as a rigorous testing culture and regular customer contact, Ecosa’s UX team has run a host of tests and experiments that have improved conversion rates.

Speaking at CX Circle Melbourne, Ecosa’s Lead Product/UX Designer Michelle Eynon, shared how Contentsquare’s insights have helped test and validate her team’s UX experiments while drawing on customer insights to create a seamless digital customer experience. 

Here are four strategies Ecosta has used that you can follow to emulate their success.

#1. Test, test—and test again

Social proof and intuitive navigation are two things customers look out for when buying a product from your company. 

But what’s the most effective way to bring them together in your UX designs? 

You might have assumptions about that, but they will need to be validated. And that’s  where testing proves invaluable. 

Hypothesis 

According to Ecosa’s customer research, customer reviews and star ratings help customers decide on purchases. 

The team hypothesized that making product reviews more visible would positively affect customer engagement.

Ecosa’s new product tile

Test

Ecosa’s UX team created a new tile for product pages that summarizes product reviews and highlighted star ratings so customers could see them at a glance. 

To see if visitors would interact with this new tile, the team A/B tested two versions of it on Contentsquare, tracking attractiveness and exposure rates.

Results

After applying Contentsquare’s Zone Based Heat Maps to the A/B test results, it was obvious which tile was the winner. 

Customers interacted more with the new tile when it showcased product reviews and star ratings and were more likely to scroll down to read the information on it. This meant its attractiveness rose from 1.99% to 5.02%.

What’s more, with product reviews and star ratings featured on the tile,  conversion rates via rose by 7% 

#2. Stay close to your customers

Understanding your customers’ needs presents you with opportunities to help them make informed decisions. 

Here’s how Ecosa combined customer journey data from Contentsquare with research to improve conversion rates. 

Challenge and hypothesis 

Ecosa’s customer research showed that their customers would research and compare several brands before purchasing. 

Michelle’s team hypothesized that providing customers with a comparative tool on their product pages would help drive conversions.  

Action 

To help customers with their research, Ecosa created a competitive analysis section on the Ecosa Pillow product page, making sure to include key selling points of their pillow products that aren’t supplied by their competitors’ pillow products.

Following positive results on new customer conversion rates as a result of this change, the team continued to optimize. 

After seeing high click-through rates on the competitor subhead, Ecosa’s UX team tested a second pillow page variant, further elaborating on how its pillows stand out from the competition, and calling out its trial period return policy.

Results 

Using Contentsquare, the UX team found that having a competitor comparison on the pillow product page improved new customer conversions by an amazing 28%. 

Both tests resulted in an 18% increase in conversion rate.

#3. Speak to customer-facing teams 

Conducting customer interviews and consulting behavioral data aren’t the only ways to uncover customer pain points. 

You should also prioritize speaking to your customer-facing teams, such as customer service, product and procurement. 

Here’s how an insight from customer service helped Michelle’s team improve conversions by 8%—making their customer service team happier in the process. 

Challenge and hypothesis 

Ecosa’s customer service team brought it to Michelle’s team’s attention that 3.9% of pre-purchase calls to customer service were querying available sizes of the  Ecosa mattress.. 

Upon inspection, the UX team realized that this sizing information needed to be clarified on the website.

Action 

Ecosa’s UX team put together a quick, and highly effective, initial solution – inserting mattress specifications (including sizes) on the website for customers to read. 

This quick fix halved the number of pre-purchase calls concerning mattress sizing from 3.9% to 2.1%.

Later, the team created a new information drop-down area (including mattress measurements) as part of a new product page design. 

This made that essential information easier to find, further reducing pre-purchase calls concerning mattress sizing to 1.32% .

Results 

With product information now easy for customers to locate, pre-purchase calls to customer service dropped by 300%—and conversions rose by 8%. 

#4. Use behavioral data to learn how customers interact with your site

Understanding how your visitors behave on your website is the first step towards deciphering what frustrates them and how they interact with a site to get what they want. And it’s this understanding that informs how Ecosa’s UX team designs the company’s digital experience for its customers. 

Challenge and hypothesis 

Customers have low attention spans. They tend to scan, rather than read, your online content. And according to our recent Digital Experience Benchmark report, they only scroll an average of 50% down pages.

It’s essential to make it easy for customers to find the most critical information about the product they’re looking at, ideally without having to scroll. 

You might, for example, cater to this behavior by adding a product summary or other eye-catching information at the top of a product  page. 

That’s exactly what Michelle’s team decided to do, and test.  

Action 

Ecosa’s UX team worked with its product and procurement teams to create a ‘Best For’ section at the top of each product page, highlighting the key selling points of each product. 

The team ran an A/B test with Contentsquare to validate their new version, comparing conversions, exposure and attractiveness metrics. 

Results 

When product pages included the product summary up top, they performed significantly better. 

Actually, that’s an understatement: They saw 16% conversion rate boost and 173% increase in engagement.

3 key takeaways for creating a better digital experience 

Keep things simple: Not all changes need to be huge. Simple solutions can reap huge rewards without having to take up a lot of time and/or resources. 

Stay close to your customers:  Regular customer research helps you understand what they’re looking for and will help you develop content that helps them along the purchase journey. 

Go beyond data:  Customer-facing teams can provide valuable insights on enhancing user experience that may not be evident through data analysis.

Want to see how Contentsquare can help you understand how to optimize your digital experience? Watch the 6 minute demo below. Then drop us a line.

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The post 4 actionable ways Ecosa uses Contentsquare to improve the customer experience appeared first on Contentsquare.

From optimizing CTAs to removing user form friction, Daniel shared several optimization examples you can learn from—and it all starts with sharing user data.

Resolving UX issues starts with aligning teams around data

With a small digital team, Hotel Chocolat relies on Contentsquare across the board when it comes to leveraging data to make better business decisions.

“We are a very small but data-driven team,” Daniel said. “Lots of different teams at Hotel Chocolat use Contentsquare, from the UX team to the CRO team. Even our digital designers have access to Contentsquare and will occasionally go in and check stuff on there.”

While the UX and eCommerce teams use Contentsquare on a daily or weekly basis to conduct their own work, they also use data from Contentsquare to explain website changes to the rest of the business.

One example Daniel gave of how the team uses Contentsquare is around customer service: “Even making small changes to your website can have a big impact on the amount of customers who contact the business. That’s why we’ll use zoning analysis in Contentsquare to explain the rationale behind these decisions.”

Fixing three common UX issues with Contentsquare

Daniel shared three other examples of how Hotel Chocolat’s digital team has identified and fixed common UX problems across its website in order to optimize customer journeys, drive revenue and improve self-service.

UX Issue 1: Rage clicks on add-to-basket CTAs

Using Contentsquare, Hotel Chocolat’s digital team noticed that customers were having trouble buying one of the company’s most popular products: the Velvetiser.

“Doing some routine analysis of the Velvetiser product detail page (PDP), we found that the add to basket CTA and optional add-ons had really high click rates,” said Daniel. “This seemed like a really positive thing. But as we started to dive a little bit deeper, we noticed there were some issues.”

Using CS Insights, the digital team noticed that the add-to-basket CTA had a high recurrence rate and a high number of rage clicks–when users show their frustration by repeatedly clicking an element in a website or app).

The team used the Session Repay capability to see exactly what was going wrong and discovered that the PDP forced customers to preselect a color before other elements on the page were clickable.

The team responded by making the PDP preselect the color based on where the user had come from. As Daniel explained: “If they came from a charcoal link, the PDP would preselect charcoal. That instantly made these elements clickable and reduced rage clicks completely.”

The result of these changes was a reduction in “missed opportunity”—a score which indicates lost revenue in Contentsquare—down to zero.

UX Issue 2: High bounce rate on blog pages

Hotel Chocolat has also been using Contentsquare to optimize its SEO journeys. Daniel’s team became determined to do this after finding that the brand’s blogs had an  average bounce rate of 82%—and what’s more, that the traffic that didn’t bounce from the blogs subsequently had a low conversion rate.

This was bad news, because weekly analysis showed that 3.8% of all Hotel Chocolat’s traffic was entering the site via these blog pages—and that proportion was growing.

“We had to work out where that traffic wanted to go, and make it easier for users to get there,” Daniel  says.

The digital team used Contentsquare’s Customer Journey Analysis within CS Digital to address the issue. This analysis showed them that users were tending to going from blog posts to PDPs, Product Listing Pages (PLPs) or the website’s Search bar.

Using Impact Qualification, the team saw that the best-performing journeys were those where users went to the PLPs. Further analysis showed which four specific PLP journeys led to higher conversions. The team then added these conversion-driving PLPs as quick links at the bottom of blog pages and ran a series of A/B tests to see which performed best.

Simply by adding these  links, Daniel’s team soon saw a decreased average bounce rate across blog pages, a higher average order value (AOV) from SEO traffic, and an increase in session time.

“Bear in mind that our blogs tend to be quite long, so these links only have an exposure rate of 30% or less. Despite that, this zone still had a high attractiveness rate and conversion rate per click,” Daniel says.

UX Issue 3: User friction in the Contact Us form

Daniel’s third example concerned the company’s Contact Us form, which customers were complaining about as being confusing and difficult to fill in..

Assessing the form, the UX team realized that it had low color contrast, unclear steps, and poor signposting to FAQs which could resolve customers’ queries.

The team used CS Insights’ Zone-Based Heatmaps and Form Analysis capabilities to identify the exact areas where customers were falling off the form and experiencing frustrations. Based on the findings, the team then ran a series of A/B tests to try and improve the form.

They improved the contrast, making the form easier to read; they numbered the steps, so it was clear in what order the form needed to be filled in. But the change that had the biggest impact was highlighting FAQs more clearly throughout the form.

“The results of these changes were remarkable and represented a huge business win,” says Daniel.

Following these data-driven optimizations, the team saw a decrease in form submissions and a higher drop off rate, as well as a higher click rate through to the relevant FAQs. Rather than filling in the form, resulting in time-consuming customer service responses, customers were instead opting to self-serve and find the answers themselves.

What does Hotel Chocolat’s data-driven future look like?

“We believe that Hotel Chocolat and Contentsquare are a match made in heaven,” said Daniel. “We’ve been using Contentsquare for years to align all our teams and optimize our digital experience, and that is only going to continue. The more wins we have, the more opportunities we see to optimize things still further.”

The company is continuing to test and optimize user journeys from SEO traffic, continuously analyzing data to see where they can improve their UX and continuously assessing where best to focus their time and resources when it comes to optimizing AOV.

“The digital team is always iterating to see how we can improve the experience for users, and Contentsquare is a big part of that process of iteration for us,” says Daniel.

See how Contentsquare can help you identify and resolve common UX issues

If you’d like to find out how Contentsquare’s Digital Experience Analytics cloud can help you identify and resolve UX problems  and optimize to drive revenue, get in touch for a demo.

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Budgets are tightening, and teams are forced to do more with less. When your ad budget gets cut, or new team hire is put on hold, you need to focus on your customers’ experience the most. But why?

Because retaining customers you’ve already spent money acquiring and expanding their spending with your brand is more cost-effective than continually trying to acquire new, first-time shoppers.

To retain customers, you need to offer a seamless experience, and to do that, you need to understand your customers’ behaviors, feelings and intents throughout the customer journey. By understanding their goals, frustrations and micro-interactions, you can create a seamless, intuitive experience that delights shoppers and makes them want to keep coming back.

So, to help you sweeten up your customer experience (CX) and give your customers some extra love before Valentine’s day, here are 12 quick things you can do today to give your website a higher return and better experience.

Make it easy for those who forget their logins and passwords

• Explicitly state and display password requirements as users create their account password. The requirements should always be visible to reduce user friction or frustration. For example, next to the password form field, display the criteria in a checklist that updates as they type.

Mailchimp shows when password requirements are fulfilled as the user is typing. (Source: mailchimp.com)

• Allow users to show passwords by providing a button near or within the password form field to unmask the password as they type. This way, they can check their work as they go, reducing cognitive load and catching any mistakes.
• For quick and secure sign-ins on mobile, offer physiological biometric authentication, such as Touch ID, Face ID, or voice recognition. The user can quickly sign in without remembering and entering a password.

Offer chatbots and virtual assistants—subtly

• Allow users to initiate the chat dialog themselves when they are ready for help. Unwanted pop-ups, overlays, or dialogs appearing uninitiated disrupts the user experience and cause frustration. If prompting the chat is a must for your team, keep it to the side of the screen and allow users to interact with the page behind the prompt overlay. Keep the dismissal button clear and clickable at all times.
• Encourage users to search for information with an FAQ or navigational assistant before using live support. When users indicate they need more help, you connect them directly to a live representative. This helps reduce the number of call center requests and provides immediate relief to users with simple-to-fix issues. And remember, make it clear to the user when interacting with an assistant versus live support.

Crate & Barrel provides several self-help prompts before sending a customer to live chat. (Source: crateandbarrel.com)

• Be clear about how users should engage with the chatbot immediately, and adjust messaging for offline hours. To speed up the support process, provide users with pre-determined suggestions, topics, or common issues to narrow down the problem. During offline hours, allow the user to ‘leave a message’ instead and prompt them to leave critical information like name, email and a description of the issue. If you can, provide a timeline or window that they’ll receive a response from your support team, so users know when to expect a response.

Be a good host and provide cookie(s) options

• Clearly explain the purpose of cookies on your site and whether the information will be shared with third-party companies. Provide links to the website’s privacy policy and cookies page within the banner so the user can learn more before making a decision.
• Allow users to accept or reject cookies. If explicitly asking users for cookies consent, provide two clear options to accept or reject. Provide a CTA to reject or decline cookies with an “X.”

HubSpot notifies and lets users accept or reject cookies on their site using a homepage banner. (Source: hubspot.com)

• Allow the user to customize their cookie settings from the banner. Display a button within or near the banner that allows the user to opt in/out of certain cookies on the site. Communicate the different cookie settings by using clear buttons such as toggles, checkboxes, or radio buttons that make it easy for the user to know what they can turn on and off. Also, include an option that allows the user to opt in/out of ALL options at once.

Don’t make visitors search too hard for the search bar

• Ensure that the search function is always easy to find and accessible. Place it within the global navigation and make it sticky to the page as users scroll. Depending on your space, you can opt for a search icon or bar in the menu. However, the user should only click once or twice to enable the keyboard.
• As users type within the search, enable autofill to make suggestions to search within various categories rather than a site-wide search. Surface recommended categories and subcategories or auto-direct them to the matching list page. This helps avoid producing an overwhelming and irrelevant list of search results. Users may also miss out on beneficial features and functionality using a search results page rather than finding items through the main navigation category.

Lululemon provides suggestions using keywords and provides a dark overlay over the page so visitors can easily focus on the search. (Source: shop.lululemon.com)

• Create a dark overlay when visitors use the search function to help contrast it from the rest of the webpage, which usually has a white background. The contract helps de-clutter the screen and is easier for the eyes to focus on the search suggestions.

The post 12 Tips to Sweeten Up Your CX appeared first on Contentsquare.

At a time when economic uncertainty is rife, how can FinServ businesses continue to drive growth in 2023? One answer is to meet the growing customer demand for seamless self-service online experiences. How? By investing time and resources into improving and differentiating your digital customer experience (CX).

Earlier this week, Contenstquare’s Product Marketing Leader and FinServ industry expert Gary Lombardo spoke with Scott Roen, Managing Director of investment management company BlackRock’s software division Aladdin Product Group (APG BlackRock), about how to deliver winning customer experience for FinServ.

Gary and Scott chatted openly about the biggest emerging trends and customer experience challenges facing the FinServ industry. Scott also shared how APG Blackrock uses digital experience analytics (DXA) to optimize its digital offerings and unlock new growth opportunities.

As anybody who attended will agree, it was great to hear insights on CX in FinServ from a leader in the industry. For those of you who didn’t catch the webinar, read on for four practical tips for creating a winning FinServ experience in 2023, according to Scott.

But first: let’s talk about trends…

What key trends are shaping how FinServ brands invest their time and resources?

Gary kicked things off with an overview of the myriad trends impacting the FinServ industry today. First (and arguably foremost) on the list: changing consumer behavior.

Post-COVID, there’s been a huge acceleration in the use of digital across all industries— particularly FinServ. Mobile is driving a big chunk of this innovation, despite not yet being the dominant device for FinServ customers. Our 2022 FinServ Digital Experience Benchmark Report revealed that desktop traffic continues to dominate the industry, accounting for 60% of online traffic).

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However, today’s customer is used to intuitive app experiences like Uber, Facebook and Apple, which have become the benchmark for customer experience. And so consumers increasingly expect self-serve options within FinServ, too—without having to call a contact center.

New entrants into the market (such as neo-actors and FinTechs) and new types of payment in cryptocurrency and NFTs are changing the game practically daily. Simultaneously, FinServ brands must reckon with tightening financial regulations and increasing social consciousness necessitating more transparency. And all this is played out against a background of economic unpredictability.

These trends present a rapidly, relentlessly shifting context for both new entrants and traditional players in FinServ. It’s a little wonder that FinServ brands now prioritize digital strategy for long-term success as they seek the agility to respond and adapt quickly. Or that CX in particular is assuming greater importance in FinServ companies’ roadmaps.

As Managing Director of APG BlackRock, Scott Roen leads the development and management of BlackRock’s desktop and mobile experiences. He is, therefore, perfectly placed to share insights into why digital CX has become a top priority for FinServ companies.

4 ways to deliver winning customer experiences for financial services in 2023

1. Build journeys that engage from end-to-end with rich CX data

Like many FinServ companies, BlackRock has switched from the old ‘acquisition and retention’ model of software to a subscription-to-platform model. This switch is advantageous for all sorts of reasons, including more stickiness and recurring revenue, but certainly doesn’t come without challenges.

“We have to keep delivering new value to our clients to make a subscription stick,” says Scott. “But when clients use your product daily, they build a routine—so how do you expose users to new platform developments without disrupting their daily routine?”

To say APG BlackRock delivers its clients considerable additional value through the Aladdin Enterprise platform is an understatement. They’re averaging around 2,000 production releases a month. (Yes, you read that correctly.) But for Scott’s team, it remained an open question as to whether its platform users were noticing and taking advantage of these updates.

“We’ve taken agility to another level, but how do we ensure users adopt these new features without disrupting their overall experience? That’s where Contentsquare helps us out.” –Scott Roen, Managing Director at APG, BlackRock

Using Contentsquare Zone Based Heatmaps, APG BlackRock can see exactly how its users interact with each page, which has led to some eye-popping discoveries.

“We’ve identified our platform’s homepage as a starting point in the journeys of 90% of our clients,” says Scott. “The homepage is therefore the ideal place to lightly introduce new features and enhancements to users and encourage adoption. So we’ve started experimenting with heatmaps to see where it’s best to do this on the homepage.”

When APG BlackRock introduced a new product to their platform’s homepage, they immediately saw 30% of traffic for that product was coming directly via the homepage. So far, so… kinda obvious.

But it was when Scott’s team tweaked the product’s position on the homepage that Contentsquare revealed the extraordinary importance of UX on adoption.

“We moved the product link about 100 pixels over on the front door page, and overnight we saw a 90% drop in traffic! This shows that even small movements can have a dramatic impact. Contentsquare reveals that impact in real-time and helps us understand exactly why it’s happening.” –Scott Roen, Managing Director at APG, BlackRock

Scott now spends a significant portion of his time sharing this sort of adoption-analytics data with APG BlackRock’s engineers and developers, helping to ensure they’re using their time efficiently in developing and refining features that BlackRock’s clients actually use.

2. Get obsessive over customer happiness. Let NPS be your compass (and DXA your GPS)

It goes without saying that understanding how happy your customers are with your CX is intrinsic to understanding how successfully you’re designing and delivering it. But what’s the best way to measure their happiness?

For Scott, one way to measure customer happiness is actively monitoring your Net Promoter Score (NPS).

“I know NPS has its flaws and its critics, but I still think it’s a good measure of overall satisfaction,” says Scott. “It doesn’t answer the ‘why’ but it’s a great starting point. It’s like a compass that gives us the direction of travel, but you also need a GPS to guide you to where you should be going—and that’s where additional data analytics comes in.”

To understand its user satisfaction levels, APG BlackRock complements NPS with click data from Adobe Analytics and digital experience analytics insights from Contentsquare.

“Contentsquare helps us work out the ‘why’. In the past, we used benchmarking studies to discover how clients worked through our experience, but this wasn’t scalable. Contentsquare gives us that scalability.” –Scott Roen, Managing Director at APG, BlackRock

Scott shared an example; BlackRock provides an app that helps portfolio managers manage broad investment funds. APG BlackRock received feedback from users that saving and deleting workspaces within the app was causing headaches—confusing news when click analytics showed them that users were managing to save workspaces.

“We were struggling with the why,” says Scott.

Scott’s team quickly realized that users weren’t receiving a notification confirming that their workspace was saved. Without this feedback loop, they were trying to save in alternative ways, and even closing the app and opening it again to ensure their workspace was saved.

“This was a pretty easy UX fix for us,” says Scott. “But the fact is, we wouldn’t have understood what was going wrong without taking that deeper dive. Now we can do that at scale with Contentsquare.”

3. Build user-centric experiences—and let them guide your product investments

In a highly commodified market like FinServ, your biggest opportunity to differentiate isn’t necessarily your products—it’s your customer experience.

In fact, adopting a customer-centric mindset instead of a product-centric one will lead you to improve your products. By understanding your customers better, you’ll be able to direct your product investment decisions more effectively.

Scott gave us an example where monitoring CX led BlackRock to partner with another company to build a product set on their platform.

It started with a discovery. By analyzing CX on the platform, Scott’s team saw that users were downloading data from within the Aladdin Enterprise platform’s UI and then taking that data elsewhere to perform ad hoc analyses. They were essentially hacking their own data solutions: but why?

“We hypothesized that although clients would naturally prefer to use our pre-built UI to do data work, they also wanted more flexibility within our UI to play with datasets. This insight contributed to us pursuing a partnership with Snowflake to enable BlackRock clients to build datasets within our platform—without needing to download and play elsewhere. This was a huge growth opportunity for us, and one that came from simply monitoring what was going on within the existing customer experience.”

4. Use AI to anticipate and meet customer needs—but don’t bombard them.

FinServ brands are experiencing a growing demand from their customers for highly personalized, self-serve experiences. And BlackRock is no exception.

“We’re currently rethinking our help service,” says Scott. “We analyzed the inquiries coming into our support lines and found that half could be self-service. Moreover, research suggests that our clients want self-service when convenient.”

But Scott’s team didn’t intend to just build another help portal; they wanted to thread help into and throughout their user journeys, so it was there when clients needed it. Of course, there’s a thin line between helping customers navigate your CX and patronizing and irritating them—a danger of which Scott was very aware.

“It’s a tough design challenge because you don’t want to get in users’ way,” he says. “So we needed to identify trigger moments in our user journeys where friction was likely to push clients towards calling. That way, we could begin to offer users help when it’s relevant, and before they’ve even asked for it—but without impacting their customer experience.”

To anticipate users’ needs without spamming them with help, APG BlackRock uses data analysis to identify common friction points in their CX.

For Scott, AI is one of the key trends FinServ brands must watch (and invest in) in 2023—not least for its capacity to optimize CX. And he has a great tip on how to do this without blowing your budget:

“AI is the biggest thing on my mind at the moment, and it’s helping to optimize our CX. But to avoid having to make huge investments in AI, I’ve found it’s best to work with partners who already have AI baked in, such as Contentsquare. If you don’t take advantage of those offerings, then you’re leaving an opportunity on the table.” –Scott Roen, Managing Director at APG, BlackRock

Incidentally, if you’d like some more inspiration to help remove friction from your financial services customer experience, download our latest guide: How to Fix Your Customers’ 5 Biggest Online Banking Frustrations.

And finally, where is BlackRock’s customer experience heading next?

Asked what APG BlackRock’s big focus for CX in 2023 will be, Scott noted the importance of serving BlackRock’s customers across multiple channels and cross-channel integration.

“We must ensure we’re serving users on whatever channel they’re using,” says Scott. “This means integrating different channels and tailoring our CX to specific channels. So we’re not just taking desktop software and porting that to mobile. We’re trying to understand exactly what a portfolio manager needs to get a jump on their day when they grab their smartphone in the morning so that we can give them that on our app.”

Ready to level up your customer experiences for financial services in 2023?
We hope this blog has given you plenty of ideas to enhance your online financial services customer experience and drive growth in 2023.

And remember: Contentsquare can help you get there. Watch our 6-minute Financial Services Product Tour to find out exactly how we can support your FinServ business in 2023 and beyond.

The post 4 tips for delivering on-the-money customer experiences for financial services from BlackRock appeared first on Contentsquare.

During the pandemic, like most businesses, they had to pivot quickly to online. But it was imperative to the KING team that they were able to bring their in-store personalized and seamless experience to the digital world. So they turned to Contentsquare to help in its digital transformation and managed to do so in just a year.

We sat down with Pete Konakov, UX/UI Lead at KING to learn more about their experience with Contentsquare and how the platform augmented their UX strategies. 

How does Contentsquare align with KING’s UX strategy?

At KING we want to challenge everything, especially inherited design. Being a young team, we’ve managed to make a lot of positive changes in a short time frame and that’s definitely made possible with the tools available in Contentsquare. It has helped us identify key areas of concern early on by being data and customer focused!

Which is your favorite feature, and why?

It’s a tie between Journey Analysis and Session Replay. Journey Analysis is such a great visual representation of the customer journey. In my 20 years as a designer, I’ve never seen it represented that way. Being a very visual person, it makes it so much more digestible.

Session Replay… because I love being a fly on the wall. It’s a great way to try to figure out why users are bouncing from certain pages and where they’re experiencing friction. Could it be a bug? An unintentional dark pattern? Seeing how the user interacts, albeit anonymously, is so key to understanding their pain points.

How does your team use Contentsquare?

We use it across multiple teams, mainly between UX and E-commerce. We’ve used it extensively on our PDP recently and the insights we’ve received from it have helped drive the redesign of that -especially by using the Zoning Analysis tool.

What are your key challenges, and how does Contentsquare help? 

Our key challenge at the moment is driving conversions from our PDPs and this remains our main focus for this quarter. With a majority of our products being customizable, there are a lot of options for the user to sift through, especially with our swatches.

Trying to figure out a way to display up to 200 of these swatches without losing the user is a mammoth task and one that relies on a lot of data. We’ve used the Zoning Analysis tool to help us determine which content is the most important to our users and which content may be inhibiting them from the most important CTA on the page which is the Add to Cart!

The hope is that trimming the fat and simplifying the process of building their desired product will increase the add-to-carts and create an overall positive experience for our users.

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Can you share an instance when insights from Contentsquare helped to drive a UX design change? 

Last year we redesigned our main navigation, which even on desktop was hidden behind a hamburger menu. Using Contentsquare in conjunction with A/B testing, we were able to first identify the pain points surrounding our click rates, attractiveness and overall user journeys (thank you Journey Analysis!).

Simply put, our old navigation was a dud and we needed a change. By analyzing our A/B tests with Contentsquare, we were able to make decisions that resulted in the new navigation having a:

• 223% increase in click rates
• 213% increase in attractiveness
• 5% reduction in site exits
• and most importantly a 21% uplift in conversions

Win.

If you were to recommend Contentsquare to a friend, what would you say?

I’d say that as powerful as the tool is, that isn’t the best thing about it. As a novice, you can be quite overwhelmed with everything going on there — digesting data can give the best of us brain fog. My biggest takeaway is the support we’ve received from our team at Contentsquare. They’re always there to help us break down what we’re seeing and to help us make sense of why we’re seeing it. I’ve always found it helpful getting an outside set of eyes onto something I’m working on as it’s easy to get bogged down in the detail and sometimes miss the bigger picture, so having our regular sessions with the CS team definitely helps with that and is very much appreciated.  

Finally, please share your top 3 UX tips.

• Challenge EVERYTHING.
• Small changes can produce HUGE results.
• Above all else, listen to your customers. Without their voices being heard, you don’t have a product.

Hear more from Petar at Champagne Breakfast Sydney

The post A Q&A with Petar Konakov on KING’s digital transformation journey appeared first on Contentsquare.

Check out her expert insight below

Why do a rebrand? What is the motivation behind it? 

Fanny Pourcenoux: In most cases, a rebranding project is a new chapter for a company. It usually goes hand in hand with an international expansion, the creation of a new product or service, market acceleration, or preparation for an IPO. It often involves a complete change in organizational processes and includes the update or creation of a new logo, design, slogan, and sometimes even a name change.

I’d say that everything has to start with market research. Where your company is located, what market opportunities there are, the strengths and weaknesses, what differentiates you from competitors, what are your values, where we want to position ourselves by the end of the year, and so on… All these aspects provide the basis for your new positioning, messaging, and of course the future visual identity. 

Conducting qualitative studies is also a good way to get external opinions and feedback. Getting the opinion of your customers, partners, investors, and prospects will give you insights into their perception of your brand now and what they expect in the future. Including all stakeholders at each step of the process will allow you to use their feedback to validate or challenge your strategy.

What should you take into account when rebranding? 

FP: You need to understand your market. You can’t start your rebranding project without knowing your competition and potential opportunities, and the external perception of your brand—how it’s perceived/recognized by your prospects and the general public. That’s why conducting qualitative research is essential. 

You also need to know your target audience (or the new target audience) if you’re repositioning, be transparent about your strengths and weaknesses internally and build a strategy in line with them.

Also, be aware of the time this may take. Depending on how business-critical your rebranding is, it is likely to impact your other business priorities and, available resources. A successful full rebrand can take up to a year and this is probably for the better! Botching your rebranding would be the worst possible outcome.

It’s important to keep all stakeholders, external and internal, informed of the progress and the different stages. This way if the project gets delayed, they won’t be caught off guard.   

What are the main objectives of a rebranding project? 

FP: Your objectives will be specific to your business and your approach, but in most cases, rebranding serves to bring the brand back in line with your target audience and market. The purpose of a rebrand is usually to evolve and align a company’s branding with its business and recruitment objectives. 

In most cases, the key elements of a rebranding project are a new visual identity and messaging. The slogan or baseline will officially support your new positioning. It should be short and international in scope.

Your visual identity should get the DNA of your company across in just a few seconds. Your logo should be memorable and match your style guide which covers typography, color palettes, illustrations, icons, and visuals.

Most importantly, don’t forget to put digital accessibility at the heart of your decisions to make your rebranding fully inclusive.

How can you monitor the performance of a rebrand?

FP: It’s essential to combine qualitative and quantitative metrics. You can monitor quantitative metrics through the new traffic and interactions on your site, your social networks, and your analytics tools. I’d also suggest AB testing some versions in order to launch the best-performing one. 

But don’t forget to conduct qualitative studies with your prospects, customers, partners, and investors to measure the results and get VoC insights. 

What are some potential challenges when rebranding? 

FP: Depending on the age of your brand, your employees and customers might be very attached to it. It’s up to you to explain the purpose of the rebrand to make sure it’s well-received. It’s not always easy to get everyone to agree, but remember that an internal point of view is always biased and that external opinions provide an objective reflection of your brand. 

On the technical side, don’t define your strategy without involving your design and technical teams. They’ll have to ensure the end-to-end execution of your design, campaign elements, and your site, and they need sufficient time to work on it. Trust them in the planning and enlist a project manager to make sure deadlines are met at each step so your delivery isn’t jeopardized. 

The post Rebranding 101: Expert advice from Contentsquare’s Global Director of Brand appeared first on Contentsquare.