About Robin and Björn Borg

As Global eCommerce Director, Robin and his team are responsible for harnessing data insights to drive strategic decisions, ensuring that Björn Borg’s online presence aligns with its evolving brand identity and customer expectations. Björn Borg is a Swedish apparel fashion brand named after a former professional tennis player. The brand focuses on underwear, sports apparel and bags as well as the licensing of footwear and eyewear. Its products are sold in over 20 markets worldwide. 

What are your key challenges and priorities?

Björn Borg’s evolution from a traditional underwear brand to a multifaceted sportswear brand brings unique challenges for Robin and his team. “The sportswear sector witnessed remarkable growth, with our online sales skyrocketing by almost 100% in 2023. This development demands a deep understanding of customer behavior and the quantification of data to inform data-driven decision-making”, shares Robin. 

What stood out most to you about Contentsquare?

Website analytics have been an important topic for the team at Björn Borg for a long time—they’re experienced in analyzing data, formulating hypotheses and conducting heatmap analyses to inform their decision-making. 

However, what they were lacking was the ability to really deep dive into customer behavior on their website and quantify the potential impact of changes. “Contentsquare has filled this void, providing us with a comprehensive suite of tools that keeps exceeding our expectations,” says Robin. 

Know what drives engagement and abandonment on your sites and mobile apps.

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How does Contentsquare align with your wider business strategy?

Björn Borg’s eCommerce goals are very ambitious and growth-oriented. Robin explains that the team is even striving to exceed their targets, so allocating resources strategically and focusing on the areas with the highest potential impact is key. 

“Contentsquare plays a pivotal role, providing us with the insights and tools to optimize our efforts and drive measurable results.” – Robin Salazar, Global eCommerce Director at Björn Borg 

Which features does your team use the most or is looking forward to getting stuck into?

Robin’s team has diverse needs and varies according to each team member’s areas of expertise—but Contentsquare caters to them all. “I personally find CS Live particularly useful for getting a quick overview of customer engagement on the site, while my colleagues often dig deeper into the analysis using Session Replays or Customer Journey Analysis to uncover more detailed insights”, explains Robin. 

Where do you see Contentsquare supporting your eCommerce growth the most?

According to Robin, Contentsquare’s Impact Quantification shines as a prime example of how the tool contributes to Björn Borg’s business success. Robin elaborates: “We already gather lots of data on our conversion drivers but with Contentsquare, we can easily evaluate potential improvements and quantify their impact on our conversion rate.” This ability to measure the potential impact of changes makes decision-making and prioritizing initiatives significantly easier  and more efficient for Robin and his team. 

If you were to recommend Contentsquare to a contact in the industry, what would you say?

“I will make this short since my thoughts on Contentsquare are clear: You’ll gain access to more data than you can imagine— in a structured and accessible way, that empowers your whole team to drive action and make data-driven decisions”. —Robin Salazar, Global eCommerce Director at Björn Borg

The post How Contentsquare is supporting Björn Borg boost its eCommerce growth appeared first on Contentsquare.

In today’s challenging commerce landscape, understanding the customer – their needs, preferences and behaviors – is crucial. This detailed understanding is the key to providing relevant, personalized shopping experiences that ultimately help businesses stay competitive. Avensia’s commerce advisors have extensive experience supporting businesses with the strategies, processes and data analytics needed to optimize customer experiences and drive long-term customer loyalty. Now they can also offer the market leading end-to-end solution for digital experience insights. 

“The Contentsquare solution is a great addition to our tech portfolio, complementing our advisory services perfectly. We can now enable our customers to quickly dive deep into behavioral data to understand the root cause of problems and take actions that’ll have an immediate effect on their bottom line. Because holistic  customer insights mean smarter decision-making,”

Jens Axelsson, VP Customer Experience at Avensia

Together, Avensia and Contentsquare support Norwegian omnichannel fashion brand Stormberg. The brand has worked closely with the Avensia team since the launch of their current e-commerce site in 2021. Therefore, they tasked Avensia to support a better understanding of customer behavior and decision-making founded in data rather than a gut feeling.

“We trusted Avensia to recommend the best tool for our organization since they know our business, team and ambitions well. Together with Avensia and Contentsquare we are now taking a step into the future with detailed data insights and a complete understanding of our customers’ online behavior. This will help us stay on top of change, trends and most importantly – stay ahead of competition.”

Anders Sundsrud, Head of SEO & CRO, Stormberg

Avensia’s advisors are familiar with and advocates of the Contentsquare platform, allowing them to support customers far beyond initial implementation, training and configuration. Many businesses lack the time and internal resources to monitor data, analyze patterns and take appropriate action on a daily basis. Here, Avensia can provide services to proactively recommend optimization tactics based on data insights from the Contentsquare tool. 

“We are excited about partnering with Avensia and to work together with their amazingly skilled team who can help customers to harvest the full value of Contentsquare. We look forward to empowering brands in the retail industry and beyond with actionable behavioral data to help them deliver better online experiences, improve customer happiness and accelerate their growth.”

– Ossi Savolainen, Regional Vice President, Sweden, Contentsquare

About Avensia

At Avensia, we are experts in modern commerce. Our talented team provides businesses with tailored strategies and the most relevant technology for e-commerce, omnichannel, customer experience, and information management.

By combining solid technical know-how and strategical expertise with insights into the latest trends Avensia helps B2C and B2B customers across Europe, North America, and APAC to accelerate growth each day for long-term success. We continuously challenge ourselves and our customers to push the boundaries of what’s possible. Together, we create the winners in modern commerce.

Avensia’s global team includes more than 350 modern commerce experts based in Sweden (HQ), Norway, United Kingdom, United States and Philippines. Avensia is listed on the Nasdaq First North Premier Growth Market under the name AVEN. Learn more at avensia.com.

About Contentsquare

Contentsquare is a leading digital experience analytics platform that empowers businesses to understand and optimize the user experience across web, mobile, and app platforms. Its AI-powered platform provides rich and contextual insight into customer behaviors, feelings and intent — at every touchpoint in their journey — enabling businesses to build empathy and create lasting impact. 

More than 1300 leading brands use Contentsquare to grow their business, deliver more customer happiness and move with greater agility in a constantly changing world. Its insights are used to optimize the experience on over 1.3 million websites worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.contentsquare.com 

Media Contact:

Erica Ashner

Erica.Ashner@Contentsquare.com

The post Avensia Extends Offering to Help Commerce Businesses Make Smarter Decisions in Ever-Changing Market Conditions appeared first on Contentsquare.

The clue’s in the name: Peak seasons are always a big deal for eCommerce brands. Whether it’s Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or Cyber Week, the holiday season is invariably the busiest time of year for retailers.

However, it’s never been as critical as it is now to take advantage of seasonal surges.

Over half (57%) of retail sites saw less traffic YoY in 2023, according to our 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report. At the same time, ad spend rose. This pushed cost per visit up by +12.4%.

This means it costs more than ever to attract visitors to your site. And to make matters worse, the visitors you manage to attract will also have less money to spend on online shopping.

According to Bazaarvoice’s Shopper Experience Index (SEI) 17, 73% of consumers have changed their spending habits due to the cost of living crisis, with 77% choosing to spend less on non-essential products.

But it’s not all doom and gloom for online retailers.

The peak season opportunity (backed up with some Black Friday data)

With cash-strapped shoppers looking to find the best bang for their buck in 2024, brands have plenty of scope to attract and retain new customers right now. Indeed, Bazaarvoice’s Shopper Experience Index reports that 70% of shoppers are currently willing to switch brands

And peak season, when shoppers are primed to look for the best deals on offer and eCommerce sales figures tend to spike, is the perfect time to capitalize on this opportunity.

To get a handle on just how big the peak opportunity is, let’s look at some eCommerce peak season stats from Contentsquare’s 2024 Retail Peak Season Benchmarks, an analysis of website performance over 2023’s Black Friday period.

• During Black Friday weekend (from Black Friday to Cyber Monday), traffic shot up by +32.7% in volume from pre-peak levels
• Conversion rates also jumped (from 2.4% to 3.55%) over Black Friday weekend
• And order volumes for the Black Friday weekend period increased from the previous year, too, with Average Order Value up +7.7% YoY

The pressure is on to make the most of the next eCommerce peak season—and we can help you take some of that pressure off.

In this in-depth article, we run through some tips for preparing your website (and app) for peak season success.

And there’s more where that came from.

To learn more strategies for getting your website ready for peak (complete with examples of big eCommerce brands optimizing their digital experiences to drive better outcomes, both in and out of peak season) download our handy how-to guide.

How to prepare for peak sale season

A guide to seasonal site optimization with UX examples from 9 big brand retailers.

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3 steps to prep for eCommerce peak season

In the dynamic realm of eCommerce, preparation is the key to thriving during peak shopping seasons like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Valentine’s, Halloween and Christmas.

Digital leaders know that planning thoroughly in advance is essential for not only surviving but excelling during these periods of heightened online activity and customer demand.

But how can you make sure that your eCommerce business’s site is ready for the peak season?

It’s a three-step process…

Step 1: Optimize your website and app for the best customer experience

The first and arguably most pivotal step is to evaluate and optimize your existing digital channels well in advance of the peak season frenzy.

Know your visitor (before they visit!)

Of course, what the ‘best customer experience’ looks like depends on the sort of customer you’re serving. With that in mind, it helps to understand what the typical peak visitor will look like.

While this naturally differs for every business, you can get a general idea of what to expect by checking out our 2024 Peak Season Benchmark data.

This tells you (among other things) that last year’s peak visitors:

• Were overwhelmingly browsing on mobile
• Mostly arrived via paid or organic search
• Were mostly new visitors (though returning visitors had a much, much higher conversion rate)
• Were frustrated first and foremost by JavaScript errors and slow page loads

One traffic trend to be aware of (a trend covered extensively in Bazaarvoice’s Shopper Experience Index report) is the growing importance of social media.

Bazaarvoice reports that over half (58%) of shoppers say they often discover a product or service through social media—and among 18-34 year olds, 73% have bought products via social media in the last year.

Cultivate customer satisfaction with Digital Experience Analytics

Whoever your visitors are, and however they arrive on your sites, your goal when preparing for peak is to ensure that your digital experience (and therefore their holiday shopping experience) is as engaging and frustration-free as possible.

Visitor frustration is a big problem in the digital experience domain, and our 2024 Peak Digital Experience Benchmark data shows that 2 in 5 (40.2%) of sessions were marred by some form of it over the course of 2023’s Black Friday season.

By drawing insights from prior experiences and harnessing data from an Experience Intelligence platform with Digital Experience Analytics (DXA), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM), Voice of Customer and Product Analytics capabilities, you can make informed decisions to reduce frustration and maximize engagement.

A great Experience Intelligence Platform will enable you to:

• Evaluate the performance of your page and screen elements so you can make adjustments to your page and screen layouts, copy, imagery and the positioning of content
• Identify and fix visitor frustration in your experience and investigate root cause so you can quickly fix technical errors and UX-design issues
• Compare your performance to your industry peers and understand how seasonal trends are impacting your numbers during eCommerce peak season by accessing real-time industry benchmark data
• Access real-time, 360-degree insights into your catalog’s performance and optimize (by, for exampling pricing competitively when high prices are impacting your bottom line)
• Understand the impact of user generated content on your KPIs and how to optimize its placement and timing in your visitor journeys (see below).

Want to learn more about Digital Experience Analytics and Digital Experience Monitoring? Watch our short explainer videos below.

Deploy User Generated Content to foster trust and drive online sales this eCommerce peak season

For eCommerce brands, it’s become increasingly important to provide site visitors and app users with the social proof that comes with User Generated Content (UGC).

Customers trust other customers more than they trust brands. Bazaarvoice’s Shopper Experience Index survey found that 78% of customers feel more confident in making a purchase when they can see UGC on the product page—and 55% say they’re unlikely to make a purchase without it.

And with the cost of living crisis making every purchase decision a little (or a lot) weightier, and customers looking for endorsements to give them confidence, UGC is becoming ever more pivotal: 35% of customers globally (and 43% of US customers) rely on UGC more in the current climate, according to Bazaarvoice.

Featuring UGC on your product pages is one proven strategy to drive better outcomes during peak season—but it’s far from the only one.

Don’t forget to check out our guide to seasonal site optimization for more tips on driving conversions through smarter site and app design.

How to prepare for peak sale season

A guide to seasonal site optimization with UX examples from 9 big brand retailers.

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Step 2: Follow the user journey, from campaigns to conversion

On-site optimizations can do a lot for you, but not everything happens in-site.

As you read this, you’re probably running at least one advertising campaign (and maybe even several at once) that’s driving traffic to your site and consuming your budget.

It wouldn’t be wise to lose sight of how all that inbound traffic arrives on your site, or to forget to ensure that, wherever they come from, their journey is as smoothly integrated as possible.

Establishing seamless connections across your digital ecosystem is imperative. If you’re to perform at your best during eCommerce peak season, you won’t have time to consolidate data and information across different platforms.

So make sure you integrate your Google or Adobe Analytics campaigns with your Experience Intelligence platform to create a comprehensive monitoring framework in advance.

This integration equips you with the ability to track and comprehend the performance of your marketing campaigns, thereby enabling the development of a digital experience that optimally directs traffic and enhances conversion rates.

Beyond marketing campaigns, as a general rule, integrate as much customer information as you can. VoC, APM solutions, Web Analytics, A/B Testing… all of them could work together and enhance and supercharge your marketing tech stack.

To get an even more comprehensive understanding of your visitors and what makes them engage, return and convert, you should use Product Analytics to track and analyze user journeys across multiple sessions spanning your website, app and other branded experiences.

Obtaining this knowledge is crucial not only for your ability to respond in the short-term, but also for future analysis and to lead you to better and more efficient campaigns.

Step 3: Embrace real-time analysis and automation

Customer data flows incessantly during peak seasons—and you can’t rely on manual methods to make sense of it. It’ll be too time-consuming and slow.

Instead, you should embrace automation as your ally in efficiently managing the inundation of data. Implementing integrations that automate routine tasks and decisions will enable seamless operation when the crucial moment arrives.

The capacity to analyze data in real-time is equally indispensable.

Leveraging machine learning and AI-driven insights empower you to make instantaneous, data-supported decisions, identify trends, make predictions regarding customer behavior and mount proactive responses.

Such real-time adaptability can determine whether you capitalize on surges in demand or miss out on valuable opportunities.

Contentsquare’s Experience Intelligence platform empowers businesses with various real-time analytic capabilities, including:

• Advanced AI that helps you understand the customer experience in real time. Metrics such as Frustration Score can make sense of diverse information (Rage clicks, load times, hesitation, …) to understand when customers are struggling in real-time.
• Real-time alerts and dashboards, to keep control of your most important KPIs and trigger alerts that bring the most urgent, disruption-causing issues to your team’s attention
• Reporting and communication tools that get the right alert to the right team using the right channels, whether in the form of a a Jira Ticket or a Slack message

Retailers, hit peak eCommerce peak season performance with Contentsquare

Our Experience Intelligence platform provides thousands of retailers and eCommerce brands with insight into shoppers’ behaviors, feelings and intent, helping them to build more effective customer experiences on their websites and apps.

For eCommerce brands looking to make their next eCommerce peak season pop, one of our key integration partners is Bazaarvoice, a full funnel user generated content (UGC) platform for eCommerce brands.

As we mentioned earlier, UGC is hugely important for driving conversions—particularly during peak season, when shoppers are bombarded with rival promotional offers and are looking for reasons to buy from your brand.

By integrating Contentsquare with Bazaarvoice, you can get a better understanding of the impact that user UGC, ratings, and reviews are having on your engagement metrics, conversion rates, and online revenue.

You can read more about how this integration enhances both Contentsquare and Bazaarvoice here.

Want to see exactly what Contentsquare can do for your brand as we approach peak season? Book a demo: We can’t wait to show you.

Take a product tour

Get to grips with Contentsquare fundamentals with this 6 minute product tour.

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The post How to prepare your website for the most important eCommerce peak season ever appeared first on Contentsquare.

For starters, it helps explain the -5.8% Year-on-Year drop in eCommerce conversion rates that we saw last year—and the accompanying dip in session consumption metrics such as time spent per session.

We lay out exactly how much these metrics dropped across 10 retail sub-industries in 2023 in our recent 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark report, which we link to below. (You can also read a summary of the report’s key findings.)

To accompany the report’s release, we’re lending retailers a hand in addressing its diagnosis of conversion rate decline by publishing a series of articles on eCommerce conversion rate optimization. (This in-depth, albeit more general, article on conversion rate optimization should also help.)

In this article, we draw on findings from the benchmark report to investigate why the eCommerce conversion funnel is changing—and why this change demands a new approach to conversion rate optimization for retailers.

See how your digital experience stacks up.

Download the 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report for the metrics that really matter.

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What is the eCommerce conversion funnel?

Marketers use funnels to represent the customer journey from ‘top of the funnel’ (TOFU) awareness through ‘middle of the funnel’ (MOFU) consideration to ‘bottom of the funnel’ (BOFU) conversion. The object is to get as many customers from the top to the bottom of the funnel.

A narrowing funnel shape is appropriate because while awareness casts a wide net and (ideally) brings in a big audience, only a minority of those who become aware of a brand will end up buying something from it—and there’s a steady drop-off along the way.

Traditionally, the on-site eCommerce funnel has been mapped out like this:

• Top of the funnel (TOFU): Awareness = Homepage
• Middle of the funnel (MOFU): Consideration = Category/Search/Product pages
• Bottom of the funnel (BOFU): Intent/Purchase = Checkout

With this model in mind, retailers have been spending lots of time curating stories and working on TOFU (homepage-based) content to raise brand awareness, attracting new customers who can be nurtured further down the funnel towards conversion and retention.

But things have changed. For an increasing proportion of visitors to eCommerce websites, the homepage is no longer the first port of call—and they’re entirely bypassing the traditional TOFU.

So why is this happening?

eCommerce conversion funnel stages

In the world of eCommerce, the conversion funnel is a critical component for businesses looking to increase their sales and revenue. It is a marketing concept that describes the journey a customer takes from the initial introduction to a product or service to the final purchase. Understanding the different stages of the conversion funnel is essential for eCommerce businesses to optimize their sales funnel and convert more visitors into customers.

The eCommerce conversion funnel consists of four main stages:

1. Awareness: This is the top of the funnel where potential customers first become aware of a product or service. It includes various marketing channels, such as social media, search engines, and email marketing.
2. Interest: At this stage, customers explore and research products and services to learn more about their features, benefits, and pricing. This stage includes product pages and category pages on the eCommerce website.
3. Decision: In this stage, customers make a decision to buy a product or service. This stage includes the shopping cart and checkout process on the website.
4. Action: At the bottom of the funnel, customers complete the transaction and become paying customers.

By analyzing each stage of the eCommerce conversion funnel, businesses identify areas to optimize their marketing efforts or improve the user experience on their website. This helps improve conversion rates and generate more revenue for the business.

eCommerce conversion funnel by industry

Why can the eCommerce conversion funnel change depending on the industry? Because of the distinct nature, needs and goals within each industry.

For example, an eCommerce store selling fashion may want to focus on getting users to view a product page and add items to their cart, while an eCommerce store selling electronics may want to encourage users to read product reviews before making a purchase.

Different industries require different approaches, and the conversion funnel should be tailored to the industry in order to maximize conversions.

Here’s another example of how different a conversion funnel might look in the retail and travel eCommerce industries.

1. Retail eCommerce funnel:

• Awareness: Potential customers become aware of the product/brand through online ads, word-of-mouth and social media.
• Interest: Interested customers research the product/brand by reading reviews and visiting the website
• Desire: Potential customers browse the website to learn more about the product/brand and compare with competitors
• Action: Customers make a purchase decision and add items to their shopping cart
• Conversion: Customers complete the purchase and become paying clients

2. Travel eCommerce Funnel:

• Awareness: Potential customers become aware of the travel destination through online ads, word-of-mouth, and social media
• Interest: Interested customers research the destination by reading reviews and visiting the website

The traffic trends transforming the eCommerce conversion funnel

For a growing segment of eCommerce site visitors, the top of the eCommerce conversion funnel is (depending on how you look at it) being skipped entirely or is ‘sinking’ below the traditional top-of-funnel level.

The new eCommerce conversion funnel looks more like this:

• Top/Middle of the funnel (TOFU/MOFU): Awareness and Consideration = Category/Search/Product pages
• Bottom of the funnel (BOFU): Intent/Purchase = Checkout/Purchase

You can find evidence of this evolution in the findings in our 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark report.

The report shows that customers are increasingly alighting on eCommerce sites via paid search and social campaigns (not to mention influencer marketing).

And these channels and campaigns often bypass the traditional top of the funnel, fast-tracking visitors directly to product description pages.

Traffic share by channel, year-over-year

The eCommerce conversion funnel is also shortening as average session time dwindles.

Retail is one of the most mobile-led industries (with 3 in 4 (77%) visits to eCommerce sites in 2023 coming from mobile visitors)—and in 2023, mobile visitors spent an average of only 2.6 minutes on eCommerce websites—under half the time (6.2 minutes) that desktop users spend.

Time spent per session, by device, by industry vertical, year-over-year

What does the evolution of the funnel mean for retailers?

The erosion of the traditional top of the eCommerce conversion funnel—and of time spent per session—has big implications for retailers looking to convert visitors into (ideally returning) customers.

Here are three things we suggest you do to adapt:

1. Bring your story deeper down the eCommerce conversion funnel

“Instead of spending the majority of your time and effort thinking about what you want to do higher up in the funnel, you should be thinking:what do we need to get across at PDP level from a story? How do we tell the story deeper in the funnel? Because that’s clearly where customers are migrating to.”

–Tom Parker, Site Optimization Manager, Marks and Spencer

Brand stories are extremely important. They differentiate your business in the eyes of consumers and help build loyalty and lifetime value—vital when considering the hefty expense of relying on paid and new traffic.

When visitors come to your eCommerce brand through the top of the funnel, you have ample opportunities to tell them your brand story, showcase your identity and progressively nurture the sort of relationship with them that will keep them coming back in future.

However, with an increasing chunk of visitors (particularly new-to-you visitors) now coming in via paid campaigns and straight on product pages, you can no longer assume they’ll be exposed to that top-funnel story—or at least, not on the pages where TOFU content traditionally sits.

And given the decreasing time spent per session, particularly on mobile, they’re not necessarily going to have (or want to spend the) time to familiarize themselves with your non-product pages.

That’s why you need to think about working your brand story into the pages visitors are arriving on first: category and product pages.

A product page now needs to sell more than the product itself—it needs to sell your brand, too. Category, search and even checkout pages also need to pull more weight.

2. Segment your audience to personalize every experience

With a myriad of traffic sources now bringing visitors to eCommerce sites, segmenting your audience is more important than ever.

Segmenting when analyzing customer behavior helps you understand what each type of visitor is motivated by. This lets you be mindful of that motivation when tailoring your experience to serve each visitor a personalized experience, based on the segment they belong to, that takes them exactly where they want to go, as fast as possible.

This awareness needs to extend to the device they’re using to interact with your experience. Desktop users may have more appetite for delving into your product range, or consuming in-depth content that familiarizes them with your brand.

Mobile users, by contrast, will probably be less inclined to browse around your website and delve deep into content, especially if they’ve arrived via a paid ad campaign that highlights a particular product. For them, efficiency will be paramount.

Data from the 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark report shows that shoppers viewed 2.3% fewer pages per session than last year. These sessions tend to be shallower than ever before—especially on mobile. Across all retail, the average page views per session is 6.1 on desktop, while smaller screen visits only run up to an average 4.8 pages.

This insight highlights the need to continue optimizing product pages—including out-of-stock product pages—and encourage users to view more product pages with ‘You may also like’, ‘Wear it with’, ‘Bestsellers’ carousels.

However, when it comes to certain consumer segments, a low session depth doesn’t necessarily indicate a failure to convert—far from it. In fact, the evolution of the eCommerce conversion funnel suggests that many customers want to get deeper into the journey faster—and get to the checkout as fast as possible.

3. Forget the funnel: Optimize your experience from end to end

“Every detail matters. When you go through your site page by page, write down anything that bothers you. When you test these small things and take a data-driven approach to optimization, you’ll find a lot of savings in the details. It’s all about making a frictionless purchase experience for your customers.” 

—David Ting, CTO, Zenni Optical

When optimizing your customer journeys, prioritization must go to the pages customers are engaging with most frequently: Category, Product and Search.

But with entry points to your sites now being so varied and unpredictable, it’s absolutely imperative that you have a clear understanding of what’s going on at every stage of the customer journey.

The fact is that wherever in the funnel your visitors are when they’re on your website, they’ll be frustrated by friction and engaged by user experience design that encourages them to interact. To that extent, at least, the on-site conversion funnel matters less than the overall experience.

And what you should be aiming for with that experience is to remove friction (such as, but not limited to, slow loading pages) and increase engagement (and user activity) throughout.

For the full details on what’s causing friction in eCommerce experiences—and about the value of promoting user activity, check out our report.

See how your digital experience stacks up.

Download the 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report for the metrics that really matter.

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Only by having (properly segmented) insight into how customers are behaving on every page on your website—and why they’re behaving that way—can you ensure that your experience is truly optimized for conversion from end to end.

And only an AI-powered Digital Experience Analytics (DXA) solution like Contentsquare’s Digital Experience Analytics Cloud will give you that insight.

(It will certainly save you from trawling through your website and writing everything down as David Ting suggests above, though you should still keep your notepad handy!)

Optimize for the eCommerce conversion funnel with Contentsquare

Unlike traditional analytics solutions, our DXA platform doesn’t stop at showing you how many visitors are arriving on your website, clicking on stuff and bouncing, exiting or converting.

It also shows you what’s going on between clicks (via Zone-Based Heatmaps), how customers are progressing through your site (via Customer Journey Analysis) and what the root causes of customer behavior (via Session Replay).

Plus, platform features like CS Insights leverage machine learning to bring high priority client-side issues (such as technical errors) to your attention before they lose you customers.

To learn more about how leading eCommerce have used Contentsquare to optimize their experiences, check out our article on eCommerce conversion rate optimization strategies.

Or why not see for yourself what Contentsquare can do for your website and your eCommerce conversion funnel with a quick product tour?

Take a product tour

Get to grips with Contentsquare fundamentals with this 6 minute product tour.

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The post The eCommerce conversion funnel is changing: Here’s 3 strategies to help you adapt appeared first on Contentsquare.

This year, Contentsquare invited our strategic partners onsite to stop by the Contentsquare booth for on-site product demos and discussions on the power of leveraging your martech stack integrations to the full extent.

Martech stack integrations for better customer experience

At Contentsquare, we understand how important it is for retailers to leverage best-in-class martech stack integrations to create seamless and personalized customer experiences (CX).

Retailers that invest in building their unique tech stack, rather than investing in a one-size-fits-all product suite, can grow with their technology, matching key objectives with the tools they’ve invested in. High ROI is the north star for business leadership, and investing in a stack rather than a suite prevents the underutilization of expensive products.

During our two-day Techstack Showcase, Contentsquare was joined by eight forward-thinking independent software vendor (ISV) partners who, combined with Contentsquare, maximize ROI and improve digital experiences.

Partners at the Techstack Showcase

AB Tasty, Optimizely, Dynamic Yield and Monetate were the experimentation partners who spoke alongside our team on the importance of testing and personalization. Integrations across these tools allow retailer teams to uncover the why behind their campaign results and build more robust follow-up experiments.

“Speaking at the Contentsquare booth was a really great opportunity to showcase how AB Tasty works together with Contentsquare. We’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with the Contentsquare team across many retail clients globally. This was a great opportunity to keep telling that story.” —Ashley Thorpe, Team Lead – Enterprise Customer Success, AB Tasty

Bloomreach joined us during the Techstack Showcase on Monday. This partnership adds unique insights from Contentsquare to customer profiles in Bloomreach, allowing brands to trigger more personalized actions. This is vital for retailers looking for deeper analysis of their customer experience and uncovering the impact marketing campaigns have on on-site metrics.

On Tuesday, we were joined by Botify, who, together with Contentsquare, helps retailers connect the dots along the customer journey, understanding the pages causing frustration or friction and their SEO indexability. By uncovering the CX nuances, retailers can optimize their digital experiences to drive more people to their site, offer a more personalized journey, and lead more users to conversion.

Ingenuity also joined us at the booth. They help retailers build, launch and optimize digital commerce brands that connect and resonate with modern consumers.

Bazaarvoice was one of our most popular demos, with a crowd of people stopping by the booth to understand the correlation between User Generated Content and data insights. Brands and retailers who can understand the impact that user-generated content is having on their engagement metrics and conversion rates, can make better decisions for the business and CX.

“The goal for both brands and retailers is to increase conversions and the only way to do that is to serve the optimal content and personalized experience to your customers. Being able to tell the story of how Contentsquare and Bazaarvoice work together was really powerful!” —Bhavik Gandecha, Team Lead, Solution Consulting, Bazaarvoice

Contentsquare’s Experience Partner Ecosystem

We were honored to have so many fantastic partners join us at Shoptalk and look forward to expanding the program in the coming year. We understand that identifying the ins and outs of the customer experience is essential for retailers—and efficient and seamless martech stack integrations are key to revealing in-depth consumer behavior into actionable insights.

Our commitment to you, our retailer customers, is to continue to invest in product updates and a partner ecosystem that drives growth and success for your teams. Contentsquare’s Experience Partner Ecosystem today includes +125 martech stack integrations that enable retailers to understand and optimize the digital customer experience they offer.

Learn more about Contentsquare’s Partner Ecosystem here.

The post Contentsquare’s Techstack Showcase: How to Build a Best-in-Class Technology Stack for Retailers appeared first on Contentsquare.

We’ve seen the three eCommerce conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies featured in this article work wonders for the conversion rates of leading retailers (we’ve provided links to their stories throughout).

Combined with the general tips for conversion rate optimization and guide to becoming a strategic CRO specialist we provide elsewhere on our website, these CRO strategies will help you grow from strength to strength in 2024.

And that’s in spite of the troubling signs of an eCommerce decline found in our 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark report.

For this year’s report, we’ve analyzed 25 billion site visits from 1,673 retail sites, operating across 10 retail sub-industries and in 23 countries to bring you a truly comprehensive picture of the state of digital customer experiences in retail last year.

The strategies in this article are all informed by that analysis. You can find more insights and strategies for digital customer experience success inside.

See how your digital experience stacks up.

Download the 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report for the metrics that really matter.

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3 eCommerce conversion rate optimization strategies

1. Fix user frustration (it’s compromising your conversions)

The first step to ensuring eCommerce conversion rate optimization is to minimize bounces. Bounce rates rose in retail last year, increasing from 45.8% in 2022 to 46.4% in 2023.

Home Goods & Furnishings had the lowest (‘only’ 43.7%), while Appliances & Household Goods had the dubious honor of achieving the highest with a bounce rate of 61.4%. All sub verticals, however, saw an increase.

So what can retailers do to stop site visitors bouncing? Priority number one should be to scour their customer journeys to find and eliminate friction.

User frustration impacted two in five (40%) retail sessions last year, and frustration factors are doing serious damage to eCommerce conversion rates.

For example, issues with site performance not only damage the on-site experience, but also a site’s search ranking.

This is because sites with slow page loads fall short of some of Google’s most important Core Web Vitals (CWVs) standards. We go into detail about each of these standards—and how they impact a site’s ability to convert—in our report:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), a proxy for page load speed
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), measuring delayed loading of page resources
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP), highlighting a site’s responsiveness to user interaction

As a result, these websites had a +3.9% higher bounce rate than fast loading sites.

Delivering friction-free user journeys is about identifying precisely where in your journeys users are getting frustrated (which isn’t always easy), and understanding exactly what’s causing users to feel frustrated (which isn’t always obvious).

To understand both the ‘where’ and ‘why’ of user frustration, you need a digital experience analytics (DXA) solution. A solution like ours: Contentsquare’s Digital Analytics Cloud.

Our platform will not only enable you to track and measure every stage of the customer journey, leveraging AI to alert you to the presence of points of friction (and delight), but also empower you to dig behind the metrics and understand why visitors are behaving as they are.

Clarks’ eCommerce conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategy: removing a friction point from product pages

Using Contentsquare’s Customer Journey Analysis tool, the digital team at shoe retailer Clarks noticed a significant drop off in visitors adding products to baskets via its product details page. To investigate further, they applied Zone-based Heatmaps to the product detail pages.

Almost immediately, they noticed that more visitors were interacting with Size and Add to Cart buttons than with the Width selector feature. Given that selecting width is a required step to take to get to checkout, this was a big problem.

Based on this insight, Clarks decided to try pre-selecting widths for items when only one width-fit was available, thereby removing unnecessary friction from the shopping journey.

This increased the Add to Cart rate, driving $1.1million in annual revenue.

Harrods’ CRO strategy: creating a friction-free checkout process

Any technical or user experience (UX) related issues on your checkout page need to be detected and dealt with fast. After all, you don’t want to fall at the last hurdle—and a surprising number of businesses do exactly that.

Reducing friction at the checkout page can pay big dividends when it comes to conversion rates. Just ask the digital team at luxury department store Harrods.  They used Contentsquare to uncover and resolve numerous issues affecting their site’s check-out process.

As a result of these fixes, Harrods saw an 8% decline in cart abandonment and an increase in conversions.

2. Optimize user engagement to lift conversions

Securing conversions isn’t just about removing friction from the path of site users. It’s also about persuading them to move further down that path.

Retailers need to ensure their customer journeys aren’t just friction-free, but also highly engaging. Thanks to our 2024 Retail Benchmark report, you can now put a number on just how valuable each user interaction is. The key is consumption, an important measure of engagement.

We measure consumption on sites by analyzing the amount consumed by a visitor during a session, including page views and time spent per session. We found that, although 51.7% of sites saw session consumption fall last year, there were bright spots, too. Appliances & Household Goods and Consumer Electronics saw double-digit increases in consumption, by +14.1% and +11%, respectively.

See how your digital experience stacks up.

Download the 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report for the metrics that really matter.

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To make the most of every visit, digital leaders have to layer in relevant content based on segments, including:

• Visitor type (new vs. returning)
• Source of the visit (paid search vs. paid social)
• Interests (what product category did they click or tap)
• Discount propensity (is displaying a promotion doing more harm than good to the visit?)

This type of segmentation helps deliver a truly personalized and more productive on-site experience, which is essential in achieving eCommerce conversion rate optimization.

Optimizing consumption is also about detecting points in your user journeys where user interaction is minimal, and finding ways to stimulate engagement, and—by extension—conversion. (And finding points where user interaction is high to capitalize upon them.)

Lovehoney’s CRO strategy: encouraging interaction to boost conversion

Increasing user engagement can often be as simple as ensuring the elements users can interact with are accessible—and visible. Spotting these elements for yourself can be a little trickier—but DXA solutions can help.

When Lovehoney’s digital team wanted to assess the early performance of two Black Friday landing pages, they used Contentsquare’s Customer Journey Analysis tool to do it.

They found that less than 24% of users were getting from the landing page to a product description page—and 12.5% exiting the site directly.

Further investigation revealed that users who were filtering results were more likely to convert, but click rate on the sort and filter buttons was low. Lovehoney’s team responded by moving the three main categories out of the filter dropdown so users could click on these right away.

This resulted in more interaction (a measure of activity) on those filters, a 17% reduction in bounce rate and a staggering 30% increase in on-page conversions.

3. Make the most of mobile traffic (and don’t forget desktop)

When it comes to traffic share, desktop is unquestionably losing out to mobile. Over 3 in 4 (77%) visits to retail websites last year took place on mobile. Conversion, however, is a different story.

Our Benchmark data shows us that in 2023, desktop achieved a significantly higher conversion rate (3.89%) than mobile (2.20%)—and, despite dominating traffic share, mobile captured only 56.3% of revenue for retailers.

See how your digital experience stacks up.

Download the 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report for the metrics that really matter.

Get my free copy

The real insight here comes from analyzing the massive gap in time spent per session between desktop and mobile users:

Shoppers on smartphones are grazing across a few pages quickly, spending far less time per page than desktop shoppers across every vertical. These ‘micro visits’ are less likely to end in conversions, since mobile users are easier to frustrate and harder to engage.

Retailers need to prioritize optimizing for mobile web traffic and, where appropriate, launching apps, which convert better than mobile web traffic.

Clearly, desktop still matters, particularly in high-consideration verticals (such as Appliances & Household Goods and Home Goods & Furnishings), where it continues to capture the majority of revenue. Retailers should, therefore, be wary of fixating entirely on mobile, and should seek to connect mobile and desktop experiences wherever possible.

That said, the increasing abundance of mobile traffic coming retailers’ way represents an as-yet largely untapped opportunity to drive more conversion. Retailers need to optimize their mobile experiences for conversion wherever possible—and again, DXA solutions can come in handy here.

De Beers’ CRO strategy: optimizing the mobile experience

In 2018, De Beers was set to launch a new website—and one of the digital team’s top priorities was to improve mobile conversion.

Zone-based Heatmaps showed them an unusual exposure rate on the product detail pages (PDPs) seen by mobile visitors. Despite an Add to Bag CTA sitting at the top of the PDPs, a large percentage were scrolling all the way to the bottom.

The team hypothesized that users were simply not seeing the button—it being easier to miss when scrolling on mobile. They decided to test to see what a sticky CTA on the PDPs would do to conversion rates.

What it did was lift those conversion rates—by a remarkable 10%.

Test your way to eCommerce conversion rate optimization

Hopefully, this article has given you plenty of ideas for making conversion-fuelling adjustments to your eCommerce experience.

Ultimately, however, while these strategic principles will help guide you in the right direction, you should be looking to test and experiment on your site as much as possible to find the strategies that work specifically for your business.

The behavioral data provided by a DXA solution like ours can take your testing and optimization efforts to the next level—and fashion retailer New Look can attest to this.

They used Contentsquare to monitor advanced behavioral metrics (such as click rate and conversion rate of specific elements on their site) when testing out placing user generated content on their product pages.

The results were spectacular, with New Look ultimately increasing their overall product conversion by an astounding 19%. Learn more in our New Look case study.

Check out our product demo today to get an idea of how Contentsquare could help you with eCommerce conversion rate optimization—and to convert more customers than ever before this year.

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The post 3 eCommerce conversion rate optimization strategies to grow your retail business this year appeared first on Contentsquare.

However, this shift also comes with new and unique challenges.

Digital advertising costs have surged and consumer attention is becoming increasingly fragmented, leaving retailers grappling with fewer page views and rising visitor frustration.

Add echoes of recession to that list and one thing becomes clear as day: Retailers need to adapt to this new reality—and do it fast.

Here’s the good news: With the right insights, your digital team can strategize to make your customer experience a consistent growth engine for your business this year—driving more conversions and a better eCommerce ROI.

And we know just where you can find those insights: In the 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report.

See how your digital experience stacks up.

Download the 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report for the metrics that really matter.

Get my free copy

(If you’re after some general practical guidance on optimizing for conversions, don’t forget to bookmark our guide to Conversion Rate Optimization).

Keep reading to find out more about what’s inside the report and what you’ll get out of it, plus a preview of five key insights that our analysis has revealed.

The Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report: What’s in it and why it matters

In putting together this year’s retail benchmark report, we’ve analyzed 2023’s digital customer experience data, from over 25 billion site visits that happened across 1,673 retail sites, 23 countries and 10 retail verticals:

• Luxury
• Health & Beauty
• Consumer Electronics
• Fashion
• Home Goods & Furnishings
• Grocery
• Specialty Retail
• Appliances & Household Goods
• Department & Big Box
• Outdoors & Sporting Goods

Our findings will enable you to benchmark your business’s performance against your competitors. We’ve rendered them in snazzy graph and chart form, making them super accessible for you and your colleagues, and easily shareable with your execs.

We’ve also packed the report full to bursting with insights, strategies, best practices and predictions that should help you delight customers, beat the benchmark for 2024 and grow your business in spite of continuing economic pressures.

According to a recent Deloitte survey, almost a third (30%) of retail companies see ‘managing inflationary pressure and reducing costs’ as their number one priority for 2024. Despite signs that inflation is in retreat, consumers are still struggling and consumer uncertainty is high.

While technology is seen by Deloitte (and many retail executives) as a means of generating cost-saving efficiencies, the pressure to cut costs could imperil potentially vital technology investments and damage the digital customer experience when it most needs strengthening.

The 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report contains the data and insights you need to make growth-generating strategic decisions about your digital customer experience with real confidence, and to instill that same confidence in the decision-makers holding the purse strings.

Now here’s a taster of what you’ll get from reading it: five insights into the digital customer experience landscape in retail in 2023 that will point you in the direction of conversions, revenue and growth in 2024.

1. Retail conversion rates dropped in 2023—and bounces rose

To be more precise, conversion rates dropped -5.8% in 2023 from the previous year, falling to 2.59% in Q4 2023. Meanwhile, bounce rates were up by +1.3% year-on-year, up to an eye-wateringly high 46.4%.

These metrics by themselves don’t tell us much—except that retailers should be concerned.

There’s more context on conversion to be found in our report, where we look at related metrics (such as average order value and revenue per visit) and the surprising reason why overall bounce increased, even though desktop bounce rates actually improved in 2023.

To understand why conversion rates are dropping and bounce rates are rising, and to move the needle in the right direction on those all-important outcomes, retailers need to understand the full customer journey.

That’s what the 2024 Retail Digital Customer Experience Benchmark is designed to help with. And it starts with understanding where visitors are coming from. Literally.

See how your digital experience stacks up.

Download the 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report for the metrics that really matter.

Get my free copy

2. Mobile traffic dominated, hurting conversion

The year’s biggest story: Retail traffic fell -5.0%, with 57% of sites seeing less traffic in 2023 than in the previous year.

We delve into which sources this diminished traffic came from and the types of visitors brought in with it in our report, but here we’ll focus on a big factor in bringing conversion rates down: The continuing growth of mobile traffic.

Nearly 3 out of 4 (77%) visits to retail sites in 2023 came via mobile, and this device type drove more than half (56.3%) of the total revenue for retail sites in 2023—up 3 percentage points from 2022.

However, despite driving less than 1/4th of all traffic, desktop delivered nearly twice that amount in revenue. That’s because conversion is lower on mobile than desktop, at only 2.20% compared to desktop’s 3.89%.

These statistics show that eCommerce leaders urgently need to invest in optimizing mobile experiences to stimulate conversion rates.

They should also ensure that desktop and mobile experiences are seamlessly integrated, making it easy for shoppers who still prefer desktop over mobile for making purchases to complete on desktop what they’ve started on mobile.

3. Falling consumption dragged conversion down

Another crucial factor behind falling conversion rates was an across the board decline in content consumption metrics. Session depth fell another -2.3%. Scroll rate declined from 47.8% to 46.9%. And time spent on websites fell by -3.4%.

The average page views per buying session (that is, a session that ended in a purchase) in 2023 stretched beyond 20 pages, showing that the more pages and content site visitors consume the more likely they are to convert.

And when you compare that to the average page views per session in 2023 (6.1 on desktop and 4.8 on mobile), it’s easy to see that the decline of content consumption is having a huge impact on conversion rates.

Our report offers various insights into tackling the growing consumption crisis, including highlighting the device type each vertical should prioritize for optimization.

But even before reading our report, the next two insights will help point you in the right direction to start raising your consumption and conversion rates.

4. User frustration is rife—and damaging retail conversion rates

First up, you need to know your biggest enemy: User frustration, which our report reveals affects 40% of shopper experiences. This frustration is caused by many factors, including website errors and user experience design flaws, with JavaScript errors being this year’s most common (and damaging) cause, impacting 19.1% of sessions

With two out of every five visits impacted by frustration, these factors directly impact retail conversion rates and cost retailers $0.56 per visit in wasted spend.

Google is now endorsing (and demanding) the elimination of frustration from the experience. Their Core Web Vitals (CWVs) provide an objective set of performance standards for sites: perform poorly and you’re wasting precious visits.

There’s money to be recouped by fixing frustration. You can start by reading our report. We list the main CWSs where retailers are falling short and seeing far shallower session depths, a higher bounce rate, and limited engagement.

See how your digital experience stacks up.

Download the 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report for the metrics that really matter.

Get my free copy

5. Returning visitors generate higher conversion rates and more revenue

In 2023, new traffic continued to make up the majority (52.1%) of visits to retail sites. (You’ll find the full breakdown of new vs. returning traffic share, by retail vertical, year-over-year, in our report.)

And if retailers want to improve their conversion rates in 2024, they might want to change that.

Because when customers come back, they don’t just browse—they buy, and in a big way. Our report reveals that sites with higher numbers of returning visitors enjoy a staggering +40% higher conversion rate.

Coupled with the fact that, unlike returning visitors, newcomers are more likely to come from paid channels, it means that those repeat engagements aren’t just valuable—they’re also cheaper to attract and convert 4x better than new visitors.

This strategic revelation is key for any retailer looking to maximize value and efficiency in one fell swoop. Tap into owned marketing—like email and SMS—to attract more returning traffic and boost revenue.

So if you want a mantra for driving conversions and growth in 2024 through your digital customer experience, here it is: “Engage, convert, retain—and repeat!”

Boost retail conversion rates with digital experience analytics

We’ve just scratched the surface of the insights on offer in the 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report. Here we’ve had room to give you a quick oversight of the lay of the land in retail in 2023—and of what you need to work on in 2024 to see healthy conversion rates and growth.

As for the ‘how’ of making these changes, you’ll need technology that enables you to explore and optimize every stage of the customer journey. That’s where digital experience analytics (DXA) comes into play.

DXA goes beyond traditional analytics by enabling you to dig into the full range of user behavior, recording and analyzing the entire customer journey, including both the clicks and the conversion-driving activity that happens between the clicks: scrolls, hovers, taps, etc.

We’ve written elsewhere about how DXA enables you to optimize conversion rates—and we’ve seen countless of our retail clients use Contentsquare to do exactly that.

French luxury fashion house Kenzo, for example, saw a +150% increase in online conversion rate (a +25% increase from the previous year) within seven days of making changes to its eCommerce site suggested by Contentsquare.

If you’re thinking you might like to join the ranks of retailers who’ve used Contentsquare to supercharge conversions, why not check out a short product tour to see it in action?

You never know, it could be a conversion experience for you—and, ultimately, for your customers.

Take a product tour

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The post Boost your retail conversion rates with these 5 insights from our Benchmark Report appeared first on Contentsquare.

Brands need a deeper, more holistic understanding of their customers to provide the experiences they crave. The CX your brand offers can directly impact its growth, revenue and ROI in 2023.

Here are 10 eCommerce trends we’ll see in 2023:

1. Live-stream shopping experiences will take off

Live shopping is a part of social commerce that combines entertainment with real-time shopping. It’s not just more engaging; it also delivers results. Companies see up to 10X higher conversion rates with live shopping than in conventional eCommerce.

Today, over 35% of all live streamers are in the apparel and fashion category, but in the future, it’s likely to get widespread adoption across all industries.

Already in action

Kiehl’s, a skincare brand, ran an Instagram Live events campaign hosted by beauty content creators. During the events, Kiehl’s customers could learn about their products and make purchases directly via their Instagram Shop. The ​​seven-week campaign delivered an 8X return on ad spend.

2. Employees will be content creators

Posts shared by employees get 800% more engagement than those shared by corporate brand accounts.

As social media helps content creators grow their personal brand, it can also help corporate brands better connect with their audience by humanizing their messaging and products. Having a human share a message on social media helps cuts through the clutter of countless ads and promotions.

Solutions for eCommerce Teams

3. Building community-driven brands

Community building is all about engaging customers beyond just selling your products. It fosters customer loyalty, building long-lasting relationships with brands. The online communities market is projected to increase from its value of $7.3 billion to $27.6 billion by 2032—a compound annual growth rate of 14%.

“In the next five years it’ll not only be about customer journeys, but it’ll also be about life journeys.” —Gary Roth, Director of Business Value Engineering, Contentsquare

Already in action

The sports apparel company, Lululemon has led the way in building a loyal community around its brand. After acquiring Mirror, an in-home smart fitness mirror, they launched a loyalty and content memberships program. By combining the two products—apparel and fitness tech—they’re able to create more compelling experiences and cultivate positive change in the lives of their customers.

4. More holistic, personalized omnichannel experiences

Brands will continue to optimize their personalization strategies to create a holistic brand experience through every channel. Whether it is on social media, email, SMS or any other type of digital touchpoint, consumers want a seamless experience. Brands need to anticipate consumers’ unique needs and expectations, demonstrate empathy and deliver a personalized experience while remaining uncomplicated and enjoyable to use.

2024 Digital CX Trends

Discover ten trends and what you can do to prepare your business for 2024—and beyond.

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5. Testing will be embedded into eCommerce company culture

Today, experimentation and testing are usually owned by one department and used to increase conversion rates. However, it will soon be integrated and owned across all departments. It will become part of business culture.

Testing is about understanding your customer and letting them have a voice in the development of their experience. —Mary Kate Cash, Head of Growth Marketing, NA, AB Tasty

6. VR & AR implementation will skyrocket

Brands are offering more interactive experiences that build a strong emotional connection between the consumer and a product. Mimicking in-store experiences like tasting a sample, testing out a potential couch or feeling the softness of a sweater are challenging to replicate digitally, but augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and 3D content help bridge the gap. They can also provide a deeper understanding and attachment to a product that builds trust with consumers and makes the purchasing decision easier.

7. AI will help companies form stronger connections

The adoption of Artificial intelligence is taking off at an unprecedented speed. A study by PwC found that 52% of companies accelerated their AI adoption plans due to Covid. AI will help brands build stronger connections with their customers by personalizing every step in the customer journey.

84% of C-level executives believe that they need to adopt and leverage AI to drive growth objectives.

8. Sustainability will be embedded into CX

Sustainability is an increasingly important part of consumer purchasing decisions, 70% of consumers think it’s important that a brand is sustainable or eco-friendly. In the future, this will be embedded into company culture, products, services and the experience they provide their customers. Consumption will also go beyond buying physical things.

9. Digital accessibility will be prioritized in all channels and experiences

Accessibility isn’t just a trending buzzword—it’s a strategic shift brands across industries will continue to prioritize in 2023. Increasing accessibility will not only increase your audience and expand your opportunities for conversions and additional revenue but also save you from expensive lawsuits and litigation.

In 2022 there were over 4,000 lawsuits regarding digital accessibility, with 77% targeting eCommerce brands.

10. Digital trust and data privacy along the customer journey

Third-party cookies are phasing out, so brands will need to rely on first-party data. This means building trust with customers and finding direct ways to capture customer data is the key to creating meaningful and unique experiences.

We want to be respectful of the trust that consumers give us. And also, be able to come back to them with personalized, unique experiences. —Diana Zaccardi, SVP, Digital Marketing & Base Management, Verizon

Looking for more eCommerce trends? Check out our virtual event, CX circle, for more trends, predictions and insights into the future of CX.

The post 10 eCommerce trends transforming CX in 2023 appeared first on Contentsquare.

About Rick and ASICS

As a Senior eCommerce Manager, Rick Hoving leads the EMEA website optimization team at ASICS, responsible for their eCommerce website asics.com and 14 outlet sites spanning across Europe. During the last five years, Rick says their online channel has grown exponentially.

“I’ve seen our eCommerce channel grow from the tiny island that it was five years ago to the instrumental sales channel that it is today.”

What are your key challenges and priorities?

The pandemic helped propel ASICS’ eCommerce performance, but it also brought new challenges by shifting Rick and his team’s priorities. “Most of our production takes place in Southeast Asia where they had strict lockdowns at the end of last year. This meant we struggled with stock capacity issues, which changed the whole nature of my role and my team’s focus. We had to prioritize and find smarter ways to use our available stock.”

Rick says he’s keen to put his focus back on customer experience, optimizing conversion rate, and future-proofing their eCommerce site. “Customer experience is a priority, such as making sure the website is optimized so people can easily find the right products,” Rick says, “At the end of the day, we’re a commercial team that needs to grow sales so conversion rate is my number one focus.”

Rick shares some of their strategic objectives for 2022, “This year, we’re looking at market expansion within Europe, mainly in The Nordics and Eastern Europe. We also want to grow our apparel sales, because the majority of our revenue comes from running footwear but we also sell a lot of other great products. In terms of devices, optimizing our mobile experience is key—80% of our traffic comes from mobile, but still, less than 50% actually convert.”

What stood out most to you about Contentsquare?

Before Contentsquare, the team at ASICS had access to traditional analytics data but needed a tool that would make data accessible to everyone—that’s what stood out to Rick about Contentsquare:

“I was impressed with the ease of getting relevant analytics when it comes to content, which is usually quite hard. As an eCommerce team, you think that analytics tools like Google Analytics will be enough. But with my team expanding, we’re going to have people joining that are more creative, who aren’t as data-savvy. It’s super important to me that everyone can easily get the insights they need.” — Rick Hoving, Senior eCommerce Manager at ASICS

Which features are looking forward to getting stuck into?

“The entire CS Digital suite is essential. It will help ensure that my entire team has access to visual data analytics,” says Rick.

He also highlights Find & Fix, which empowers both technical and business teams to create seamless experiences by removing friction points and slow performance.

“Find & Fix tool is super important for us because we work with a global digital team that owns and operates our eCommerce platform. The tool gives us a good look under the hood into what they’re doing and helps us prioritize what’s most important.”

Which teams are getting their hands on Contentsquare?

Rick’s extended team will be the first to implement Contentsquare into their daily work. “We have three different streams within my team that’ll get access to Contentsquare: The trading and merchandising team, the activations team who focus on content and campaigns, and the optimizations team who look after the website.”

Rick mentions their UX and CRO teams will also integrate Contentsquare with their existing A/B testing tools. He’ll encourage other teams across ASICS to get their hands on the tool, too: “If people hear we have a new tool, they’re more than welcome to reach out. We can then work together to understand how they could benefit from the tool.”

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How does Contentsquare align with your wider business strategy?

For the team at ASICS, finding a balance between brand and commercial focus is key. “In terms of our eCommerce site, we’re always on the fence about whether it’s a marketing or sales channel. Contentsquare will help me steer that conversation because right now decisions are mainly based on gut feeling,” says Rick, “We think that asics.com is our biggest shopping window and the main stage for our brand. While I’d argue that it’s the biggest traffic driver, and therefore the biggest extension of our sales platform,” explains Rick.

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

“It’s the tool that impressed me the most with how easy it is to get relevant, valuable insights for content and merchandising elements of our site. The tool is a game-changer for my team when it comes to making the right decisions and helping us build a more impactful website.”

The post Making great strides: How ASICS is gearing up its eCommerce website for success appeared first on Contentsquare.

Peak sales season means more site traffic and potential revenue, plus fresh opportunities to convert first-time visitors into loyal lifetime customers. According to the 2022 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report, 51% of all retail traffic came from new users in 2021.

To maximize your peak season performance, you need to create an exceptional and memorable customer experience (CX).  Taking steps to improve your site speed, search experience, product placement and checkout process during peak traffic periods will keep your customers happy and lead them to conversion. So, here are some quick cx optimizations to make ahead of peak sales season…

17 CX tips for peak sales season

Reducing page load speed

1. Cache more. Caching improves site performance and lessens the load placed on your original infrastructure, allowing your core resources to handle more dynamic transactions like checkout.

The probability of bounce increases by 32% when page load time goes from 1 to 3 seconds (Google).

2. Use a CDN. Consider using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to offload most web traffic from your servers so they don’t get bogged down when there’s high demand.

3. Downsize JS files. A lot of JavaScript (JS) files on your pages can impact loading time. Pre-size your images for mobile and desktop and compress them to improve page load speed.

Leveraging and optimizing the search bar

4. Add filter options to the search bar. Allow searchers to filter results by department, feature, size and more directly in the search bar for faster, more relevant results.

5. Turn popular filters and search queries into CTAs. Add your most popular search filters as call-to-actions (CTAs) on your site to reduce the steps in the customer journey.

6. Pre-load search results. Add clickable, pre-loaded search results within the search bar to get users to product pages faster.

7. Use search data for recommendations. Use common search terms on Product Description Pages (PDPs) and Product Landing Pages (PLPs) to help searchers find what they are looking for.

Displaying the best content

8. Test early and often. Start testing new CTAs, product placements, hero banners, carousels and more to see what creates the most engagement and can be replicated during peak season.

9. Highlight revenue-generating products. Simplify your homepage and prioritize revenue-generating content in hero banners and above-the-fold sections.

10. Display UGC. Share user-generated content (UGC) to build trust and increase click rate, engagement and conversions.

How to Win at Sales Season

20+ essential CX tips from Clarins, Avon and Pizza Hut to get your site prepped for the season.

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Maximizing your product placement

11. Allow add-to-basket options on PLPs. Let customers hover over items and “add to basket” while still on a PLP to simplify the customer journey.

12. Share product availability. Add messaging like “limited stock available” or “2 items left” to minimize frustration and create a sense of urgency.

13. Provide social proof. Go beyond sharing reviews at the bottom of PDPs and highlight top reviews and ratings above the fold to increase demand.

Improving checkout UX and reducing cart abandonment

14. Re-engage returning visitors. Reload visitors’ carts when they return to minimize the risk of them not finding what they originally selected, encouraging them to convert faster.

15. Make discounts simple, obvious and easy to add. Make it clear what discounts have been added or why their cart doesn’t qualify. Give discount code names that are easy to remember, like ‘BLACKFRIDAY’ instead of ‘BLKFRI2022.’

16. Combine checkout fields. Fewer form fields reduce the risk of abandonment so aim for 8-10 fields maximum. Combine ‘First Name’ and ‘Last Name’ fields and include the option to select the default billing address as the shipping address too.

The average retail conversion rate jumped from 1.95% in 2020 to 2.5% in 2021—a 26% increase (Contentsquare).

17. Add descriptive validation messaging. If a customer missed a field or entered the wrong information, highlight the field where the error occurred and give descriptive, specific messages like ‘CVV number incorrect’ or ‘add zipcode.’

Want more UX tips to prepare for the peak sales season? Check out our three things to test before the busy sales season.

The post Peak sales season: 17 CX tips to boost website ROI and sales appeared first on Contentsquare.