The first time someone visits your site, they should have a seamless and satisfying customer experience. 

In 2023, we saw a -3.6% drop in web traffic, while the cost to attract each visitor shot up by +9.4%. With website visits at an all-time low (as reported in our 2024 Digital Experience Benchmark Report), it’s crucial to deliver the right content to capture interest and encourage visitors to stick around.

The very first interaction with a website sets the tone for the entire customer journey, and a poor experience can mean a lost sale or conversion opportunity.

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To provide actionable tips on this topic, we’ve leveraged insights from the experts. Gabrielle Schneider (Senior Solutions Consultant at Contentsquare) and Shirly Manor (Solution Engineer at Cloudinary) recently shared their knowledge during the first instalment of the Make the conversion: Identify and eliminate pain points throughout the customer journey webinar series.

Here’s a breakdown: 

The importance of the awareness stage

The awareness stage marks the beginning of a potential customer‘s journey with your brand. It’s where they first encounter your company, perhaps through social media, a search engine, or even a physical store.

At this point, they’re primarily looking for your website to answer the following questions:

• Does this business offer a solution to my problem?
• Is this a brand I can trust?’

First impressions matter; studies show that nearly two-thirds of users know instantly if your site has the answer. A visually appealing, user-friendly site can create a positive impression and encourage visitors to stay longer. 

Building trust is also essential at this stage of the buying process, as visitors need to feel confident that your brand is reputable and that they can rely on your products or services. Engaging content and a smooth user experience can keep visitors on your site longer, increasing the chances of conversion.

What data and research suggests 

Results from a 2024 video marketing survey and page speed report reveals a startling truth: 45.4% of shoppers are less likely to make a purchase when the page load time exceeds four seconds. Conversely, 89% of are more likely to purchase after watching a video. This highlights the delicate balance brands need to strike. They must use visually engaging media to capture attention but also ensure the page loads quickly.

Our data further underscores this point. Their research shows that 15.7% of visitors experienced slow page loads in 2023, and websites with poor LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) saw a +3.9% increase in bounce rates. These figures emphasize the importance of a fast-loading, easy-to-use website. Every interaction with a potential customer is precious, so every moment counts.

By applying the “peak-end rule” to website design, brands can use the power of first impressions. People tend to remember the beginning and end of an experience most vividly. A slow-loading, confusing website creates a negative first impression that can be difficult to overcome. On the other hand, a quick, visually engaging website sets the stage for a positive customer journey.

Common pain points in the awareness stage

Understanding the challenges users face during the awareness stage is key to crafting an optimized experience. 

Gabrielle points out that one of the biggest pain points in the awareness stage is the inability to find necessary information, which can be exacerbated by confusing navigation and slow load times. This frustration can deter potential customers from continuing their journey with your brand.

“If I visit a site and the dropdown menus are confusing and I can’t find the product or section I’m looking for, it’s one thing, but if I can’t find what I am looking for and it’s taking forever to load, my frustration level just increases,” says Gabrielle. 

Shirly offers two main issues that you should pay close attention to: 

1. Slow page load times: When pages take too long to load, visitors are likely to abandon the site and look elsewhere. This not only affects user satisfaction but also negatively impacts your site’s search engine rankings. Slow load times can be caused by unoptimized images and videos, excessive scripts, and other heavy elements that burden the site’s performance.
2. Lack of interactivity: Websites that offer only static content—such as plain text and images—fail to engage users effectively. In today’s digital age, visitors expect a dynamic and interactive experience. A lack of engaging elements like videos, interactive product views, and user-generated content can result in a bland user experience, leading to lower engagement and higher bounce rates.

How to ensure a smooth visitor-to-customer transition

So, how can you address these pain points and ensure a smooth transition for visitors into the next stage of the customer journey? Here are some actionable tips to help you:

Tip 1: Understand visitors’ frustrations

Gabrielle suggests that the first step to solving these pain points is to understand where frustrations occur within the user experience. Once identified, addressing the root cause is essential for improvement. “The first step is understanding where those frustrations are occurring within the experience and then getting to the root cause of why,” she advises. 

Tools like Contentsquare help you better understand your target audience and identify areas where visitors experience frustration and pinpoint the exact moments they drop off your site. By understanding these pain points, you can take targeted actions to keep visitors engaged and eventually increase conversion rates. 

Contentsquare’s Digital Experience Monitoring Error Analysis helps you surface errors on your app or site.

Tip 2: Optimize all images and videos 

Visual content plays a significant role in user engagement, but it can also slow down your site if not optimized properly. Shirly advises improving images and videos to reduce load times and enhance interactivity. 

Using automated tools for template creation can streamline the process and allow marketers to focus on more strategic tasks. “Automate your work by using templates and use more interactive assets such as videos and 3D,” recommends Shirly. Use tools like Cloudinary to enhance your images and videos for faster loading times without sacrificing quality. Automated workflows can streamline this process, ensuring your site looks good and performs well.

Tip 3: Prioritize user experience

A user-friendly website is key to retaining visitors. Ensure your site is easy to navigate and that users can find the information they need quickly. Conduct regular user testing to identify any usability issues and fix them right away. Taking a proactive approach can prevent frustration and keep users on your site longer.

Contentsquare’s Customer Journey Analysis allows you to see how users progress through your site, page by page, from entry to exit

An all-in-one awareness stage solution

Using tools like Cloudinary and Contentsquare together can address many of the pain points discussed. Cloudinary acts as the engine that optimizes the visual content that fuels engagement, while Contentsquare delves into the human side of the equation – user behavior.

The true magic lies in how Cloudinary and Contentsquare integrate seamlessly. 

Picture the following scenario: Contentsquare data reveals that a significant number of visitors are bouncing off the product page due to slow loading times. By drilling down into the data, it can pinpoint the specific images or videos that are causing the slowdown. This information is then fed directly into Cloudinary. Cloudinary can then automatically optimize those specific assets, ensuring faster loading times on the product page.

This is just one example of how these two platforms work together to create a feedback loop that continuously improves the user experience. By combining Cloudinary’s visual performance expertise with Contentsquare’s user behavior insights, brands can create an awareness stage that is not only visually captivating but also frustration-free, ultimately converting more visitors into loyal customers.

Enhance the awareness stage for optimal visitor engagement 

With web traffic declining and the cost of attracting visitors rising, optimizing the awareness stage of the customer journey is more critical than ever. By understanding common pain points and leveraging the right tools, you can create a seamless, engaging, and fast-loading website experience that captures and retains visitors. 

For more in-depth insights, consider watching the Make the conversion: Identify and eliminate pain points throughout the customer journey webinar series. This five-part series, brought to you by Contentsquare in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), explores the different stages of the customer journey and offers practical advice on identifying and eliminating pain points. 

This session is now available to watch On Demand.

The post The awareness stage: How to capture and keep your visitors’ attention appeared first on Contentsquare.

The answer is to put your product users into useful categories—otherwise known as customer segmentation.

By dividing your customers into groups with similar attributes—from who they are to how they use your website or product—you find ways to address each segment’s needs, preferences and pain points.

This guide covers everything you need to understand your user base and deliver a customer experience (CX) every one of your customers loves, seeks and deserves.

What is customer segmentation?

Customer segmentation is the process of sorting customers into different groups based on their shared characteristics—like preferences, behavior or demographics. This helps you understand your customers better and serve them in a way that feels more personal and tailored to their needs.

Basically, segmentation is like sorting through your customer base to find out what they have in common—what they do, what they need and what they like. Then, with the results from your customer segmentation analysis, you can tailor marketing efforts and campaigns, sales outreach and product messaging to each of these different customer groups.

This simple act of spotting similarities or patterns is a game-changer for your company, boosting empathy, retention and loyalty, while giving your customers exactly what they want.

Customer segmentation vs. user segmentation

Terms like ‘customer’ and ‘user’ may sound similar, but they differ in context: customers make purchases, while users engage with products or services.

For segmentation, both methods involve grouping individuals by their traits or actions, with each applied differently in marketing and product development:

• Customer segmentation
  is focused on buyers and their purchasing habits. For example, you could segment customers into groups like ‘frequent buyers’ or ‘high-income customers.’
• User segmentation
  is focused on understanding and improving the experience of individuals who interact with a specific product or service, regardless of whether they’ve made a purchase. To do that, you might segment users into groups such as ‘casual users’ or ‘power users.’

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What are the different types of customer segmentation?

Different ways or models of segmenting customers let you understand, empathize with and meet the needs of various groups of individuals who share similar characteristics.

Here are nine different customer segmentation types and how to use each one to build more meaningful, relevant experiences:

1. Behavioral segmentation
   groups customers based on the actions they take on your site or product. It includes behavior-related patterns like pages visited, shopping carts abandoned, email and ad click-throughs and frustration indicators (like rage clicks).
2. Demographic segmentation
   groups customers based on shared characteristics, including factors like age, gender, location, language and education.
3. Firmographic segmentation
   groups companies (not individuals), like B2B customers, based on shared organizational attributes. They cover industry, monthly revenue, business model, employee count and business location and age.
4. Geographic segmentation: groups customers based on their physical location. Location-based segments include continent, country, state, city and town.
5. Psychographic segmentation
   groups customers based on their psychological traits. This includes personality, lifestyle, goals, interests, beliefs, attitudes, values and affiliations.
6. Technographic segmentation
   groups customers based on the technology they use to access your site or product. These segments relate to tech-based factors like hardware, internet browsers, software products and integrations.
7. Customer account data segmentation
   groups customers based on their client profile details. These can include software plan type, average purchase value, sign-up date, log-in frequency and features used.
8. Needs-based segmentation
   groups customers based on their shared demands like preferences, pain points, problems and motivations
9. Values-based segmentation
   groups customers according to economic qualities like ethical consumption and sustainability commitments

Exploring segmentation modelsThis is by no means an exhaustive list of segmentation models. There are a number of other different types for you to explore. For example, here’s how Ellie Wheeler, Senior Product Analyst at Hotjar, part of the Contentsquare group, uses recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM) segmentation to evaluate customer behavior:

“RFM segmentation can provide valuable insights into customer behavior and their engagement. We use it to tailor the product experience to the specific needs and lifecycle points of customers. 

“This method is especially helpful in segmenting customers to identify the highest performing across the three metrics (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) and understanding the steps these users took. We use those insights to increase product adoption and engagement by guiding customers to be more like these top performers.”

Who uses customer segmentation?

Customer segmentation isn’t just a tool for analysts—it benefits everyone from product managers to marketers. Take a look at how each team leverages their own customer segmentation strategy and the results it leads them to:

• Product uses segmentation to prioritize product features and enhancements that resonate most with each segment achieving more targeted, effective product development
• eCommerce customizes website content, product recommendations and promotional offers to better meet the needs of each segment gaining higher conversion rates and growth
• Customer service tailor their support channels, response times and solutions to address specific challenges across segments improving customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Sales identifies high-value customer segments and allocates resources more effectively to focus their efforts on the most promising potential customers driving more sales and revenue
• Marketing understands the unique characteristics and behaviors of each segment to create more relevant and personalized marketing strategies increasing customer engagement, conversions and retention

3 benefits of customer segmentation

To get a sense of how this simple sorting process can be used to fine-tune your CX approach, check out these three customer segmentation benefits. Don’t forget to tune into our dedicated chapter to learn how to perform customer segmentation and see more use cases.

1. Create, understand and refine buyer personas

Segmentation is great for developing an accurate picture of your ideal customers, AKA buyer personas. Building buyer personas reveals the different ways people search for, buy and use your site or product—helping you focus and prioritize your efforts, design better marketing messages and improve retention.

Start by talking to customers to create personas based on your existing user base:

• Launch a user persona survey to really get to know your buyers; who they are, why they use your site or product and what challenges they’re facing in achieving their goals
• Conduct interviews to get deeper insights by talking directly to your target audience

Then, divide these personas further into segments to improve your understanding:

• Use digital experience platforms like Contentsquare (that’s us ), analytics tools like Google Analytics and customer relationship management (CRM) tools like HubSpot to gather and analyze historical data
  
• Create segments based on your personas and apply the relevant customer segmentation model
• Use segmentation data to update your personas to best reflect your ideal customers’ characteristics and include nuances in behavioral patterns

2. Target specific customer needs

Once you’ve observed common characteristics among your segments, you can tailor their experiences strategically and deliver features or solutions that meet people’s needs in their specific context.

For example, you could

• Prioritize new products or features based on what high-value customers
  are looking for, using customer journey data
  
• Trigger marketing campaigns based on customer behavior, geographic location or other key factors to only send people the most relevant messaging
• Segment visitors by gender on your eCommerce clothing site, then target each segment with promotional campaigns
• Deliver better onboarding experiences to different segments, guiding each type of product audience toward the features they most need and use
• Use content segmentation to refine your strategy and create content more relevant and engaging to your audience

How New Balance personalized customer experiences with Contentsquare 
Jessica Bartlett, CRM Manager EMEA at New Balance, champions personalization in eCommerce. She knew that to truly personalize user experiences, she needed to dive deep into the nuances of customer behavior. By analyzing and leveraging existing customer data, Jessica crafted segments based on shopping habits and preferences.

“Like visitors who have viewed your products within a certain amount of time,” she explained, “or visitors that have looked at specific product pages or styles.”

Understanding her target customers’ journey was key. Insights from Contentsquare transformed these narratives into personalized experiences that resonated deeply with New Balance’s audience.

3. Solve customer experience and UX problems

While your products or services alone deliver value to your users, it’s your CX—the culmination of all interactions a customer experiences with your brand over time—that truly sets you apart.

Throughout the customer segmentation process, you create personalized moments and give each group the attention they deserve, increasing customer lifetime value (CLV) and customer loyalty and turning them into your biggest fans.

Say you’re puzzled about why your product’s casual users aren’t upgrading or renewing their subscription plan or why your newest customers are hitting a roadblock at onboarding. This type of segmentation streamlines the process of understanding exactly what’s going on with valuable customers, and what you can do about it. And it goes like this:

1. Identify relevant customer segments
2. Gather customer experience data
3. Analyze your quantitative and qualitative data
   
4. Personalize and improve CX and UX by segment

With this personalized approach to user analytics, you get answers to specific questions about your audience and use those insights to improve CX with segmentation.

Which customer segments are most relevant?

When done right, customer segmentation teaches you more about your most valuable cohorts of users, giving you deep insights into the audiences that matter most.

You may find these segments helpful for an effective digital experience strategy:

• Customers who churned: discover their frustrations and unmet needs to improve customer retention
  
• Free- and paid-account users: know who to target with promotional messages that entice them to upgrade
• Inactive and most active users: research why some customers get more value from your product
• High- or low-lifetime value customers: learn how to improve the experience of those users who spend more or less with you

If you’re using Hotjar: All Hotjar tools include filters that let you drill down into your data and find valuable information. Use these to apply different types of market segmentation, for example:

• Behavioral segmentation: filter by the pages users visit, where they click, exit, churn, u-turn, enter text, encounter an error or trigger an event
• Technographic segmentation: filter by device, screen resolution, browser and operating system
• Geographic segmentation: filter by country

Next steps in customer segmentation

Your business is already collecting user data, but there’s a chance you’re not leveraging it to its fullest extent. By segmenting customers, you unlock the potential of your data—so you can put your learnings into action to optimize your digital experience and drive growth.

Keep reading for deeper insights into what delights and frustrates every segment of your digital customers:

• Customer segmentation models: types, methods and techniques
• How to perform customer segmentation and implement an effective strategy
• How to conduct a customer segmentation analysis (with key metrics)
• The X best customer segmentation tools, software and platforms

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That’s because your users aren’t carbon copies of each other. Your customer base is made up of many different individuals—from a range of industries and backgrounds, each with a variety of needs and preferences. If you treat them all the same, you risk creating generic products, features and marketing campaigns that are
okay, but don’t win the hearts and minds of your target audience.

The right customer segmentation strategy helps you understand and connect with your users on a deeper level. By grouping and analyzing users by shared traits or behaviors, you discover how different cohorts act—and can then use that data to deliver a more tailored, personalized customer experience (CX).

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Here’s how to create a customer segmentation strategy that provides valuable insights and helps you make data-driven product decisions based on customer needs.

1. Define your research question(s) or business goals

Customer segmentation is a powerful way to research user needs. So like any research project, you need to
start by clearly defining the key questions you’re trying to answer.

Once you have this pinned down, you can adapt your approach to ensure you get the right customer data for your study.

For example, if your research question is, “What prevents users from mid-size companies from signing up?”, you’d look at that customer segment—i.e. users from companies that meet your definition of ‘mid-size’—and do a deep dive into their journey to find conversion blockers.

Or, if your business goal is, “To improve customer retention by X%”, you could look at the customer segment with the highest retention rates to understand key user behaviors linked with long-term loyalty. Then, encourage other users to take these retention-boosting actions and enhance their product usage.

2. Collect your customer data

With your big question in mind, it’s time to start collecting customer data. But how do you do it in a way that’s both unobtrusive for your users and gives you accurate, reliable information?

Use a digital experience analytics platform like Contentsquare () to capture detailed insights about your users and site visitors, so you can inform your customer segmentation strategy.

Here are some helpful tools and features to fuel data collection:

• Use Segments, powered by Heap (part of the Contentsquare group), to create behavior-driven user cohorts.
  Automatically capture all possible activity across your site or app to get the full picture of user behavior. Identify patterns and group users together based on actions they take (like clicks, purchases or data entry) to create detailed, accurate user segments. Then, use these segments to power your experimentation, engagement and personalization strategies.

• Use Filters in Hotjar, also part of the Contentsquare group, to drill down into data from your other behavior analysis tools.
  First, use Hotjar to generate heatmaps of user engagement or capture session recordings of users interacting with your site. Then, filter data based on your user’s journey, technology, session or behavior to understand how different customers act, and use your learnings to create user segments with shared traits or goals.

3. Analyze and organize your data into segments

Once you have enough data to draw on, start looking for trends and patterns.

This is where Heap’s Autocapture technology really shines: instead of needing to manually track everything you think you might possibly care about in the future, you get all of the data you need right away, allowing you to spot connections and make informed decisions from a comprehensive dataset.

As you start to define your user segments, follow these best practices:

• Limit the number of segments. Anywhere from 3–8 is generally best, hitting the sweet spot between ‘helpful and descriptive’ without veering into ‘overly specific and unwieldy’. Here’s a tip: think about how you’ll visualize your data. If your line graph representing your user segments looks more like a tangled scribble than an easy-to-read, easy-to-interpret diagram, you have too many segments.

• Seek out tipping points in your data.
  The moments or thresholds when customer behavior changes can be incredibly useful. For example, what’s the difference between ‘moderately’ and ‘highly’ engaged users for you and your team? A deep dive might uncover that using your product 3x per week vs. 2x per week doesn’t correlate to an increase in value for the user, but using it 4x per week vs. 3x per week does. In this case, a highly engaged user is defined as one who uses the product four times or more every week.

• Ensure your segments are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive (MECE).
  Think of your segments like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle: they don’t overlap, but when combined, they give you the full picture. Your segmentation strategy should follow the same principle. If you sample a population of your users and find that a meaningful number of them don’t fall into any of your defined segments, you’re missing something.

• Prioritize segmenting users where there are blind spots in your data.
  What are your biggest questions about user behavior? Start your analysis there. For example, if you have gaps in your knowledge around customer engagement, focus on segmenting varying levels of product usage until you have a clear understanding.

4. Put your segments into action

Now that you’ve dug through the data, parsed the patterns and sorted your users into groups, it’s time to get closer to your audience by using these different customer segments to launch targeted research and product marketing campaigns.

Here are some ways to get started.

Run market research with your ideal customers

If you’ve identified high-value, loyal customers as one of your segments, find out what they love about your brand or product—and what else they’d like to see from you.

Use Surveys, powered by Hotjar, to ask this cohort questions like, “What new product offerings would you like to see from us?”, or use a user interview tool like Engage to run in-depth sessions and learn even more about these target personas.

Deeply understanding this particular segment gives you valuable data you can use to

• Improve your customer relationship
  with these target users by meeting their specific needs and pain points (for example, by tailoring your product roadmap or introducing a higher tier of customer support)
• Understand what led them to become high-value customers
  and seek to reproduce these behaviors in similar groups of customers (like other small businesses that have the same goals)
• Attract more right-fit customers from the start
  by tweaking your marketing copy to highlight the features and benefits your ideal audience loves most

Reconstruct individual visitor sessions to reveal hidden behaviors.

I want to discover

Use your findings to

• Improve the customer journey
  for segments with poor engagement by proactively fixing blockers, such as adding more information or including social proof to address their concerns
• Find and fix problems affecting specific segments, like a localization or translation issue impacting the Spanish version of your site
• See what creates a frictionless experience
  and aim to replicate it across other segments

Upgrade your marketing strategy

The era of one-size-fits-all marketing is over; savvy teams know that tailored experiences are the key to more conversions and long-lasting, stickier users.

Share insights with your marketing team to get even more from your segments, by sending personalized messages and creating customer-centric advertising. Use your customer segmentation strategy to

• Deliver different campaigns to different cohorts, based on their specific needs, pain points and preferences. For example, if you’re targeting ‘marketers in small businesses using this tool for project management’, highlight the features that deliver the most value to users like them in your campaigns.
• Make product or pricing recommendations.
  For an eCommerce brand, this might mean showing a customer similar items based on their previous shopping habits, or displaying products that are popular with other shoppers. For a SaaS business, this could mean suggesting which pricing plan users like them get the most value from, and which products and features they use the most.

5. Perform regular customer segmentation analysis

Remember, users are people—and people change. Regularly review your customer segments to understand shifts, spot new or emerging trends and ensure your segments are still accurate and helpful.

Read on to the next chapter to learn how to conduct a customer segmentation analysis(with key metrics).

Why customer-obsessed teams need a customer segmentation strategy

For teams who are serious about improving the quality of their CX, there are many benefits of customer segmentation. Here are some of our favorites.

• Improve retention and customer loyalty.
  Discover the behavior behind engaged, satisfied users, and find ways to encourage others to adopt these same behaviors. Help users reach ‘aha!’ moments faster, get a better ROI and become an irreplaceable part of their workflow—leading to increased retention, loyalty and revenue.

• Attract more right-fit customers, faster.
  Work backward from what your happiest high-value customers love about your product, and reverse engineer marketing messages and campaigns based on that. Connect with the people who’ll benefit from your product most, and enhance the ROI of your marketing efforts at the same time.

• Prioritize product development based on customer impact.
  Focus your attention on building new features and products for your target audience. Understand what customers with the highest lifetime value want, prioritize your roadmap accordingly and allocate resources to projects that’ll have the biggest impact on your business growth.

• Create a stronger product and customer experience.
  Use customer segmentation to deliver a stronger, better customer experience. Cater to users’ unique needs based on their behavioral patterns for a seamless, effortless experience that boosts customer satisfaction.

Get granular insights with customer segmentation

The right customer segmentation strategy enables you to understand your users like never before, unlocking new opportunities to connect with them and drive growth.

Use a powerful digital experience analytics platform like Contentsquare to quickly create, organize and analyze user segments that make sense for your business, so you can use segment-specific strategies to improve core KPIs.

The result? Strategic, focused enhancements to your product—and the customer experience—that delight your customers and grow your business.

The post A 5-step customer segmentation strategy to delight your users and grow your business appeared first on Contentsquare.

This guide takes you through the top customer segmentation tools and explains how to use their segmentation features to identify valuable cohorts, apply filters to customer data and better target your campaigns using segmented data.

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Create meaningful customer segments to get fast, relevant insights about your most important users with Contentsquare.

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1. Contentsquare

Contentsquare (that’s us! ) is an all-in-one digital experience platform (DXP) that combines qualitative and quantitative tools like session replays, customer journey analysis and product analytics to reveal exactly how users interact with your product across key touchpoints.

Reporting on customer segment performance in Contentsquare

You can segment customer data in Contentsquare in three main ways:

• Apply filters and save segments as you use the platform
• Segment data using the Contentsquare Metrics API
• Import existing segments from third-party data sources using over 150 integrations, including Google Analytics (see below) and Adobe Analytics

Importing segments from Piano Analytics into Contentsquare

Use Contentsquare to apply many segmentation models, including

• Behavioral segmentation: segment customers based on how they use your website or app, such as the features they interact with most, the paths they take, and how they engage with content, e.g. rage clicks
• Technographic segmentation: segment customers based on the technologies they use, e.g. browser type, operating system, device, page load speed
• Geographic segmentation: segment customer based on where they’re located e.g. city or country
• Value-based segmentation: segment customers based on the profit they add to you business, e.g. average revenue per customer or loyalty program membership

Click to ‘Save as a new Segment’ while using Contentsquare

Use Contentsquare’s segmenting features to

• Identify valuable segments: filter data by a desired outcome, like successful sign-ups, and find out what browsing behavior or criteria are shared by your best customers so you can target more of them
• Measure and compare segment performance: for example, compare A/B test segments and see what led to desired outcomes
• Analyze and enhance segments from the rest of your tech stack: for example, combine Google Analytics segments with Contentsquare behavioral criteria to continuously refine segments and see which elements drive or stall engagement

See it in action

DPG Media, one of Europe’s largest media companies, used Contentsquare to optimize an important segment: users who clicked on website subscription ads. Customer Journey Analysis showed that most ad viewers used mobile devices, but only 8% reached the checkout page.

By segmenting Contentsquare’s Zone-Based Heatmaps, the team compared user behavior between ad viewers and non-ad viewers and found that the former were more likely to contact customer support and less likely to scroll down the page to find relevant digital subscription options.

A segmented Zone-Based Heatmap comparing clicks between ad viewers (left) and non-ad viewers (right)

The team A/B tested changes, like moving digital subscription CTAs up the page, and achieved a 6.6% increase in newspaper subscriptions and a 7% increase in revenue. Segmentation pays!

2. Hotjar

Hotjar, part of the Contentsquare group, is a product experience insights platform that combines qualitative and quantitative tools like surveys, heatmaps and user interviews.

You can segment customer data in Hotjar by

• Applying advanced filters to session data, like users who clicked on a CTA while browsing on a mobile device or users who exited after adding items to cart
• Saving customizable filters as segments
• Applying predefined behavioral or technographic segments in one click, e.g. paid traffic, mobile users or rage clicks
• Using integrations to pull segment data from other apps, like Google Analytics, Optimizely and Kissmetrics

Apply advanced filters to create custom segments from any Hotjar-powered tool

Some popular use cases to get more value from segmented customer data in Hotjar:

• Use Funnels to compare segment performance
• Visualize segment performance in Dashboards

Click to toggle insights between segments in Hotjar Dashboards

• Identify needs-based and psychographic segments with Surveys
• Target interviews to customers who match valuable segments using Hotjar Engage

You can also combine segment data with third-party tools to identify the ‘why’ behind any segment pattern—for example, pull in your Google Analytics segments and compare a heatmap of customers who signed up for your product vs. those who bounced.

3. Heap

Heap, part of the Contentsquare group, is a digital insights platform for user data analysis.

Creating a segment for power users in Heap

You can use customer segmentation in Heap to

• Create behavior-driven segments: create user cohorts based on user actions and events on your site or in-app, such as frequent buyers or product usage over time
• Perform segmentation analysis: build dashboards around valuable segments
• Merge segment data with third-party tools: for example, combine Salesforce data with Heap to track high-value users from first touch through to adoption

Pro tip: download Heap’s free segment planning template to get started by defining your segmentation strategy and customer segmentation process.

4. Google Analytics

Google Analytics, part of the Google Marketing Platform, is a freemium website analytics tool. You can use the current version, GA4, for free with sampling limits, or as part of the premium Google Analytics 360 suite.

GA4 lets you create three main types of segments:

• User segments: segment user data based on user actions or attributes, like people who browse from Canada on a mobile device
• Session segments: segment session data to only include chosen events, like making a purchase
• Event segments: segment data based on a specific interaction or occurrence, like users who view a sign-up page

Create segments in GA4 in two ways:

• Create a suggested segment: apply pre-made and predictive segments, like ‘predicted 28-day top spenders’ and ‘likely 7-day churning purchasers’
• Build a custom segment: use the segment builder tool to create segments based on any combination of users, sessions and events

Get more from Google Analytics segments: Contentsquare’s Live Signals integration sends additional user behavior signals, like rage-clicking or repeated scrolling, to GA4 in real time so you can quickly identify areas of friction.

Building a GA4 segment using Contentsquare events

5. Mixpanel

Mixpanel is a product analytics software for mobile and web apps. Since it tracks every interaction between customers and your product, you can use it to visualize customer segments and understand more about what drives product usage and customer retention.

Use Mixpanel to segment your product data by

• Viewing reports: based on metrics and single or multi-step behaviors
• Filtering data by event: for example, completing the sign-up process
• Filtering data by cohort: for example, new users from the US
• Creating custom buckets: group existing properties into meaningful segments, for example, to compare how many sign-ups are brought in by organic search vs. Google ads
• Pulling in third-party segment data: for example, using a customer data platform like Twilio Segment

You can achieve similar product data collection in analytics tools like Baremetrics or ChartMogul.

Get more from Mixpanel segments: add qualitative insights to your segments with Contentsquare’s Mixpanel integration. Click to view individual
session replays directly from Mixpanel dashboards to identify and prioritize the issues that have the greatest impact on your customer experience (CX) and revenue.

Viewing Contentsquare session replays as events in Mixpanel

6. Qualtrics XM

Qualtrics XM is advanced experience management software that captures event data points across customer, product, employee and brand experiences.

Use Qualtrics XM to segment customer data by

• Creating custom segments: segment by demographics, needs, priorities, common interests, and other psychographic or behavioral criteria for targeted campaigns
• Targeting segments with feedback: divide contacts into dynamic groups to target web and mobile feedback
• Applying custom filters: filter contacts by activity and survey response, for example by your Net Promoter Score®
• Using AI-powered segments: automatically group customers into segments, like teams, geographies and industries—useful for firmographic segmentation if you’re a B2B SaaS company

Get the context behind Qualtrics XM segments with Contentsquare: use Contentsquare’s Qualtrics integration to visualize what happened before, during and after a customer leaves feedback.

See the exact issue they experienced by viewing relevant session replays directly from the Qualtrics XM platform. Quantify how many other customers experienced the same problem, even if they never left feedback.

View session replays directly from Qualtrics XD by integrating with Contentsquare

7. Monetate

Monetate is a personalization platform that enables product and eCommerce teams to improve CX by delivering content segmentation to website visitors.

Unlike most of the other market segmentation solutions in this list, Monetate focuses on target audience segmentation before the point of conversion and A/B testing to improve conversion rates.

You can categorize users in Monetate by

• Behavioral segmentation: based on previous session behavior, like adding an item to cart
• Demographic segmentation: for US visitors only, based on data from the 2020 US Census
• Geographic segmentation: including distance from a location, such as your physical store
• Technographic segmentation: like browser capabilities or device type
• Needs-based segmentation: including current weather conditions from the National Weather Service

Pro tip: You can also add custom segmentation attributes to Monetate by integrating with third-party tools. For example, Contentsquare’s Monetate integration lets you

• Visualize user experience data, like session replays and heatmaps, to see why content works well (or doesn’t) for key segments
• Send Live Signals attributes, like Ad blocker use or exit intent, to Monetate to improve customer engagement

8. HubSpot

HubSpot is an all-in-one customer platform and CRM that covers marketing, sales, social media and customer service.

HubSpot’s most popular segmenting feature is List Segmentation, part of the Marketing Hub, which allows you to

• Create and segment contact-based and company-based lists
• Automate email campaigns and send personalized marketing messages at scale
• Segment lists based on a wide variety of criteria, including age, most recent content download and expected deal size

You can achieve similar marketing automation in email marketing tools like Mailchimp or Zoho CRM.

Enhance your HubSpot segments with Hotjar: Enrich your HubSpot contacts and leads with Hotjar’s HubSpot-certified integration. Use it to view session recordings and survey responses in your HubSpot timeline to see the why behind customer or lead behavior. Segment lists based on Hotjar session properties like rage click or exit page to trigger hyper-relevant marketing flows.

Using Hotjar session properties to build workflows in HubSpot

Customer segmentation is about more than metrics

It’s easy to get lost in the analytics side of customer segmentation if you only focus on business metrics like revenue or conversion rate. Segmentation is really all about getting to know your customers as people: real-life individuals with unique needs, goals and reasons to choose you over your competitors.

That’s why the best customer segmentation solution(s) for your business should combine quantitative analytics with customer behavior insights. That way, you’ll have the business intelligence data you need to optimize for KPIs while serving competition-beating user-friendly experiences to your customer base.

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The post The 8 best customer segmentation tools to drive revenue and CX appeared first on Contentsquare.

But these positive results were part of a mixed bag of performance metrics that indicate lingering challenges to overcome in the year ahead.

The travel & hospitality sector faced its fair share of hurdles last year, with frustration levels reaching an all-time high and bounce rates seeing a slight bump from the previous year.

While mobile devices dominated the landscape in terms of visitation, the shorter session durations associated with them are worrisome, particularly as bounce rates climbed across both mobile and desktop platforms.

Additionally, conversion rates on paid and organic social remained disappointingly low, with direct and paid channels emerging as the primary drivers of conversions.

But what does this all mean for you? 

In this blog post, we’ll take a deep dive into these five key metrics, equipping digital leaders with insights to navigate the nuances of 2024 and beat industry benchmarks.

For additional insights and strategies (and to compare the performance of Travel & Hospitality against other industries) make a beeline for Contentsquare’s 2024 Digital Experience Benchmarks.

See how your digital experience stacks up.

Get the 2024 Digital Experience Benchmark Report and Interactive Explorer for the metrics that really matter.

Access the Benchmarks

1. Frustration is at an all-time high

Visitor frustration reached an all-time high in 2023, affecting a whopping 51.4% of all visits, the highest across all 10 industries surveyed in our 2024 Digital Experience Benchmark report.

Frustration is measured by instances of specific moments of friction observed in the on-site experience, including JavaScript errors, slow page loads or rage clicks (when visitors click repeatedly and quickly on a malfunctioning or non-interactive page element).

These (often apparently small) moments of frustration have a major impact on the quality of experiences and can lead to increased bounce rates and reduced engagement, ultimately affecting conversion rates.

In 2023, JavaScript errors (18.1%) and slow page loads (23.4%) dominated frustration in the travel and hospitality sector.

To combat this, travel & hospitality brands must implement rigorous testing to catch such errors early, optimize website infrastructure to ensure faster loading times and prioritize lightweight design elements.

2. Google’s Core Web Vitals (CWVs) aren’t being met

On the topic of frustration, it’s imperative for brands to factor in Google’s Core Web Vitals if they want an objective set of site performance standards.

Share of sites by Core Web Vital performance ranges

As we can see in the chart above, too many sites still fail to meet the mark for the legacy measures of LCP and CLS.

This year, it’s also important to take note of the latest Core Web Vital: Interaction to Next Paint. This measures the time it takes for a user to interact with a webpage (e.g. clicking a button or scrolling) after the initial loading of the page, and is crucial for assessing user interface (UI) responsiveness.

To achieve an optimum INP rating, brands need to prioritize critical rendering, minimize render-blocking resources and reduce server response times.

3. Mobile dominated traffic, but mobile bounce rates rose

Traffic by device 

Mobile dominated in 2023, capturing 67.8% of traffic, an increase of 3.5 percentage points from the previous year.

However, this increase in traffic share is worrisome when factoring in the growth of mobile bounce rates.

Bounce rate by device year-on-year 

Brands should look into optimizing page load speeds by compressing images and reducing unnecessary scripts, prioritize mobile-friendly design and ensure responsive layout, streamline content and make information digestible at a glance and reduce friction in conversion paths by simplifying the checkout or conversion process for mobile users.

4. New vs. returning visitors pose an opportunity

New vs. returning traffic share by device 

The (almost) equal distribution between new and returning visitors highlights the importance for brands to segment and personalize traffic based on visitor types in 2024. These two segments should be treated differently with personalized journeys and content to ensure deeper engagement and reduced bounce rates.

5. Social has minimal impact on traffic share

Traffic share by marketing channel, year-on-year 

Direct (28.3%), organic (27.8%) and paid search (21.4%) drove a majority of traffic share for the travel & hospitality industry in 2023, with only organic search seeing a tiny increase from the previous year. More interestingly, paid social (1.7%) and organic social (0.5%) contributed the least to the marketing mix.

Considering that this industry lends itself particularly well to visual storytelling, with travel influencers and your average traveler posting a wealth of user-generated content, it presents travel & hospitality teams with an excellent opportunity to invest in social media.

Using platforms like Instagram and Pinterest and collaborating with influencers to create aspirational content makes for a powerful tool, allowing brands to expand their reach, engage with their audience and drive bookings and revenue.

Looking for more insights? Access the 2024 Digital Experience Benchmarks for additional insights that will help guide your digital strategy this year.

See how your digital experience stacks up.

Get the 2024 Digital Experience Benchmark Report and Interactive Explorer for the metrics that really matter.

Access the Benchmarks

The customer experience in Travel & Hospitality is going places—with Contentsquare

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to access the kind of valuable insights found in our Benchmark report on a 24/7/365 basis? With Contentsquare Cloud, you can.

• Get rich, contextual insights into how your site and/or app visitors are behaving and feeling with features like Zone-Based Heatmaps, Customer Journey Analysis and Session Replay.
• Leverage our AI Analytics Engine to prioritize actions based on their impact to key business metrics.
• Track down and tackle friction in your journeys with Digital Experience Monitoring, which brings client-side technical errors and UX obstacles to your immediate attention—and monitors your all-important site speed.
• Compare your digital experience metrics to your industry peers in real-time so you can meet and beat the benchmark with our platform’s Benchmarks capability.

Contentsquare lets travel and hospitality companies achieve the holistic understanding of their customers they need to drive conversions, loyalty and growth.

Want to learn more? Let us show you around…

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The post 5 must-know insights to optimize the customer experience in Travel and Hospitality in 2024 appeared first on Contentsquare.

As revealed in The 2024 Digital Experience Benchmark Report and Interactive Explorer, our latest annual survey of the digital customer experience, visits to websites fell -3.6% year-on-year (YoY) in 2023—and a majority (55%) of sites saw lower web traffic.

In this article, we dive into key findings from our Benchmarks around the traffic data trends of 2023.

Plus, we discuss how digital experience analytics (DXA) helps you get your website (or app) out of this traffic jam in 2024.

See how your digital experience stacks up.

Get the 2024 Digital Experience Benchmark Report and Interactive Explorer for the metrics that really matter.

Access the Benchmarks

Why the cost of doing digital business rose last year

Not only was there less website traffic last year, but brands were paying more for it—as paid advertising drove one in three visits (33.8%), a +5.6% YoY gain in traffic share.

At the same time (as highlighted in Tinuiti’s Digital Ads Benchmark Report), ad spend rose across the most critical acquisition channels—+17% on Google and +13% on Meta’s social media platforms.

Given this increased bill, why are websites still so reliant on paid advertising?

One big reason is that the most traffic came from mobile: it accounted for two in three  (69.7%) visits to websites last year (while desktop visits dropped by -11.5% YoY).

Furthermore, 39.5% of mobile traffic came from paid advertising in 2023 (up from 30.5% in 2022), compared to only 19.3% of desktop visits.

Websites’ increasing reliance on increasingly expensive paid sources, combined with the drop in traffic volume, meant cost per visit rose by +9.4% in 2023.

See how your digital experience stacks up.

Get the 2024 Digital Experience Benchmark Report and Interactive Explorer for the metrics that really matter.

Access the Benchmarks

3 ways to increase web traffic with digital experience analytics

Whether it’s a temporary economically determined trend or not, the decline in traffic volume last year has to be reckoned with this year.

And there’s a very real upside to this ultimatum.

The volume drop could be the forcing factor needed to shift the mindsets of digital teams away from simply acquiring new visitors and toward a better, more nuanced understanding of the traffic that does show up—so they can make the most of it.

There are few (if any) more powerful tools for doing that than a digital experience analytics platform like Contentsquare.

Here are just three examples of how DXA helps you capitalize on every visit you get.

1. Understand who your visitors are and how they’re behaving

Our Digital Experience Benchmarks will help you understand the sort of traffic you can expect to see on your website and app this year—and prepare for it.

But to really get a handle on who you’re serving on a daily basis, your business needs specific and up-to-date information on incoming traffic.

See how your digital experience stacks up.

Get the 2024 Digital Experience Benchmark Report and Interactive Explorer for the metrics that really matter.

Access the Benchmarks

A good DXA platform tells you how your visitors got to your site or app (whether that’s via a paid or unpaid source), what device they’re using and whether they’ve visited before.

It tells you how different visitor segments behave once they’re actually on your site or app—so you can compare the behavior of these segments and see where you’re failing to serve one segment while satisfying the other.

Use Contentsquare’s Impact Quantification to do an extensive analysis of user segments, so you can identify trending behavior by segment, compare the impact of issues on different segments, and understand how they affect conversion and ROI. For example, you can see at a glance how many returning user sessions are impacted by errors on desktop.

2. Optimize your user journeys

While there are all sorts of ways to attract organic traffic, such as search engine optimization (SEO), to take advantage of that traffic you need to be able to understand how visitors are using your site—at both a macro and micro level.

On the macro side, you need a high-level view of your customer journey.

Customer journey analysis gives your teams a full overview of every visitor’s on-site journey, including where it started, where it ended and the path they took in between.

Using Contentsquare’s Customer Journey Analysis, you get clear, color-coded visualizations that help your teams identify opportunities and issues within seconds.

Our Customer Journey Analysis also lets you segment data to understand how different customer types—defined either by where they came from or how they behaved—are progressing (or not progressing) through your experience.

And, thanks to our recent acquisition of Heap, a leading product analytics platform, Contentsquare also empowers you to understand and optimize user journeys—not only within your website and app, but across all your branded experiences.

3. Minimize frustration and maximize engagement on every page and screen

The 2024 Digital Experience Benchmarks report states that the average bounce rate for websites in 2023 was 48.7%—and that the bounce rate exceeded 50% in six of the ten industries analyzed.

Furthermore, there was a -5.5% YoY drop in conversion rates. This means that not only were teams paying more for less site traffic in 2023—but they also were wasting more of that spend.

One of the biggest factors behind the poor outcomes we saw last year (if not the biggest) is user frustration, which (in a world where customers increasingly expect frictionless experiences) can do real damage to your metrics.

Frustrated visitors might fail to convert, or leave your site or app, never to return. Often, they’ll also spread the word about their bad experience to other potential customers.

DXA platforms equip you to detect and fight frustration with error analysis—a capability that leverages AI to identify, prioritize and alert your team to frustrating technical issues, such as Javascript errors (the culprit in 17.7% of visits in 2023) and malfunctioning buttons on your web pages.

Contentsquare even features an AI-powered frustration score to help you surface where frustration is being fueled the most on your site.

A great DXA platform also gives your team the analytic tools it needs to investigate and fix these issues—as well as user experience (UX) issues relating to page design and copy.

Use Contentsquare’s Zone-Based Heatmaps (pictured below) and Session Replay to see things from your users’ perspective—and identify exactly what and what isn’t working on every page and screen of their brand’s digital experience.

Not only does this empower your teams to reduce frustration, but it also enables them to optimize your experience to drive engagement by improving your site content.

Discover the biggest global web traffic trends, today

Only by optimizing your experience from end to end, for every type of visitor who arrives on your site or app, can you ensure that the traffic you’re getting and the money you’re spending translate into more business growth.

For a more in-depth examination of the global web traffic analytics and trends discussed in this article (including which channels drove the most visits and how traffic split between new and returning visitors), register now to access the 2024 Digital Experience Benchmarks.

Plus, you’ll also get an assortment of strategies to help you respond to our findings—and elevate your experience in 2024.

See how your digital experience stacks up.

Get the 2024 Digital Experience Benchmark Report and Interactive Explorer for the metrics that really matter.

Access the Benchmarks

The post It’s getting harder to attract and convert web traffic. Here’s what to do about it. appeared first on Contentsquare.

What are your biggest challenges and priorities?

Dirk gives us the top three priorities of TotalEnergies’ digital team:

1. Gain flexibility and agility in an unpredictable market. Dirk emphasizes the challenges posed by the volatile energy market: “Shifts in regulations and the global economy can quickly change prices, which has a major impact on demand, making it hard for us to anticipate market changes.”
2. Bridge the brand awareness gap. Following its strategic rebranding from Lampiris to TotalEnergies, the company is now facing a brand awareness gap. “In terms of brand awareness, we find ourselves with a gap to bridge from our previous Lampiris positioning, which is challenging as we’re striving to get ahead of our competitors at the same time,” explains Dirk. 
3. Optimizing  digital marketing strategies. The digital team at TotalEnergies is focused on investing in both traditional and digital marketing channels to enhance brand visibility. “Optimizing our digital marketing activities is one of our biggest goals, which we’re trying to achieve by hiring the right people and getting the right tools in place to give us the customer insights we need to make data-driven decisions,” says Dirk.
4. Boost digital acquisition. “We’re aiming to drive digital acquisition via our website and subscription flows of gas, electricity, solar panels and charging stations. To uplift our conversions, it’s important for us to understand how users behave on our website, how they progress through the funnel and what issues they encounter,” shares Dirk.  

What stood out to you about Contentsquare?

Before integrating Contentsquare, TotalEnergies relied on Google Analytics and Hotjar to get insights into our user experience. “With Google Analytics in place, we could  track website performance and see where we were encountering problems in the funnel. Combining this data  with Hotjar, gave us deeper insights but  they were scattered across  different tools,” says Dirk.   With Contentsquare, TotalEnergies is able to get fast insights in one place, easily identify areas of frustration and seamlessly improve their digital experience. Dirk also highlights the immediate return on investment with Contentsquare and how quickly his team can get insights into their user behavior.

“The investment of Contentsquare does pay itself back directly because we can easily conduct analyses that not only identify where customer pain points are but also why they arise. These insights are invaluable to optimize our website according to our customers’ needs, improve customer satisfaction and ultimately boost acquisition.”

Dirk Biesmans, Head of Digital at TotalEnergies

How is Contentsquare helping to improve the digital experience for your energy customers?

The digital team has seamlessly integrated Contentsquare with Google Analytics 4 and Optimizely. This integration provides a comprehensive view of their customer experience, enhancing testing, personalization and transforming their energy digital experiences, resulting in an exceptional customer satisfaction.

Contentsquare also plays a big role in optimizing TotalEnergies’ digital conversion processes. “We optimize our conversion funnels by identifying drop-offs in our forms and analyzing where exactly the problem lies. We use Session Replays to deep dive into the friction points to understand why users are struggling and how to fix any issues quickly,” explains Dirk.

“In my opinion the biggest USP of Contentsquare is that you can really deep dive into any problem on your website. You can identify pain points in no time, see what impact they have and how to quickly solve them. You have all the data you need to make informed decisions in one platform.”

Dirk Biesmans, Head of Digital at TotalEnergies

Contentsquare empowers energy customers with intuitive digital experiences

Total Energies’ strategic adoption of Contentsquare showcases its effectiveness in addressing complex challenges, empowering companies to navigate the digital landscape. 

“We’re delighted to partner with TotalEnergies and support them in staying ahead in the dynamic energy market. A great customer experience is a significant success factor in today’s digital world, and we’re happy to collaborate with TotalEnergies in creating frictionless digital journeys for their customers,” says Abdi Essa, VP Sales EMEA North & Central 

Want to learn how to transform your digital strategy and enhance your customer journeys on your energy website and app? We are here to support you with data-driven digital experience optimization for energy providers. Explore our 6-minute product tour or schedule a personalized demo with one of our experts to learn more about our Digital Experience Analytics platform. 

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The post How TotalEnergies is improving the digital experience for energy customers with Contentsquare appeared first on Contentsquare.

By closely monitoring the customer retention rate, businesses can pinpoint areas of improvement, devise strategies to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty, and ultimately increase profitability. It’s worth noting that enhancing customer retention rate by merely 5% can amplify profits by 25% to 95%, as per research conducted by Bain & Company.

What is customer retention rate?

Customer retention rate is a vital performance indicator that gauges a company’s capacity to retain its customers throughout a specific customer lifecycle. This rate is calculated by dividing the number of customers at the end of a period (minus the number of new customers acquired during that period) by the number of customers at the start of the period. The outcome is then multiplied by 100 to yield the customer retention rate percentage.
A high customer retention rate signifies that a company is successful in fostering customer loyalty. This achievement can be attributed to exceptional customer service, superior products or services, and effective customer relationship management strategies. On the other hand, a low customer retention rate implies that customers are dissatisfied with the company’s offerings or customer service, compelling them to seek alternatives.

Understanding and tracking the customer retention rate is essential for businesses as it provides insights into customer behavior, satisfaction levels, and loyalty. It also enables businesses to identify potential issues, devise strategies to improve customer retention, and measure the effectiveness of these strategies over time.

Intuitive visualizations of your customers journey.

I want this product!

Why is customer retention important?

Customer retention holds paramount importance for business success for several reasons. Firstly, it’s generally more cost-effective to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones. Research suggests that the cost of acquiring a new customer can be five times higher than the cost of retaining an existing one. This is because customer acquisition typically involves marketing and advertising expenses, sales team efforts, and other costs.
Secondly, retained customers are more likely to become loyal customers who make repeat purchases, provide positive word-of-mouth referrals, and become brand advocates. This can lead to increased sales and revenue for the business. In fact, studies show that a 5% increase in customer retention can lead to a 25% to 95% increase in profits.

Lastly, customer retention provides businesses with the opportunity to build strong, long-term relationships with their customers. These relationships can lead to valuable feedback, insights, and ideas that can help the business improve its products, services, and overall customer experience. Therefore, focusing on customer retention should be a key component of any business strategy.

What about the customer retention rate online?

A seamless and user-friendly web experience plays a crucial role in retaining customers, as users are more likely to stay loyal to platforms that offer intuitive navigation, personalized content, and efficient service. Building a sense of community through online interactions, such as social media engagement and customer forums, contributes significantly to customer retention by fostering a connection between the brand and its audience.

Regularly updating and optimizing the online experience based on user feedback is essential for meeting evolving customer preferences and sustaining their interest. Offering exclusive online promotions, personalized recommendations, and timely communication can further enhance customer loyalty in the digital realm.

Ultimately, a high customer retention rate in the online space not only reflects the success of a business’s digital strategy but also establishes a foundation for long-term customer relationships.

Customer retention rate vs churn rate

In the realm of customer relationship management, two metrics stand out: Customer Retention Rate (CRR) and Churn Rate. The former is a testimony to the company’s ability to maintain customer loyalty, while the latter provides insights into customer dissatisfaction.
CRR is a reflection of the company’s success in fostering customer satisfaction, thereby influencing customer lifecycle positively. A high CRR indicates effective business strategies that promote customer loyalty, contributing significantly to the company’s revenue and growth. Notably, a high CRR is often linked with superior customer service and a positive customer experience, elements that are crucial in enhancing customer lifetime value.

On the other hand, Churn Rate or customer churn rate, measures the number of customers a company loses within a specific period. A high churn rate is a red flag, signaling potential issues in the company’s product or service offerings, or its customer relationship management. For subscription-based businesses, a high churn rate could mean a significant loss of recurring revenue, negatively impacting the business’s profitability.

However, when analyzing a company’s customer database, CRR and Churn Rate should not be viewed in isolation. Instead, they should be considered together for a comprehensive understanding of the company’s customer retention strategies. A high CRR coupled with a low Churn Rate indicates a successful business strategy, translating into a loyal customer base and steady revenue stream. Conversely, a low CRR and high Churn Rate could point to issues in customer satisfaction or customer service, necessitating immediate corrective action. By regularly monitoring and comparing these two metrics, businesses can identify trends, predict future customer behavior, and devise strategies to enhance customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Intuitive visualizations of your customers journey.

I want this product!

The post Customer retention rate: how to maxime profitability by understanding & improving appeared first on Contentsquare.

88% of consumers say a company’s customer experience is as important as its products or services (Salesforce). With businesses competing on experience, it’s those that embrace emerging innovations and digital marketing trends that will stay ahead of their competitors in 2024. We asked leading brands such as Nasdaq, Snowflake and American Express to share their predictions on what digital trends they think will dominate the landscape next year…

From generative AI to community commerce, here are their predictions for next year…

2024 Digital CX Trends

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

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1. Generative AI will be everyone’s best friend

“I don’t think Gen AI is going anywhere. I think we’re going to get smarter about how we’re going to use it, how we adopt it across all levels, what prompts to ask it, and how to think about what the follow-ons from those are. Generative AI is all the rage—it’s going to be everyone’s best friend, but only if we figure out how to use it.”

– Sehr Thadhani, Chief Digital Officer at Nasdaq

2. Brands will focus on hyper-personalization

“Hyper-personalization is going to be the big trend for brands. It’s all about delivering the right content at the right time to the right people, which has always been the challenge in marketing—it’s always about relevance and timing. Before the days of data, personalization wasn’t possible. But now, we have more data than we’ve ever had before. We also have tools like Contentsquare that will help us with personalization.”

– Denise Persson, Chief Marketing Officer at Snowflake

3. It’s all about mapping out the full digital experience

“Long gone are the days where you’re just trying to figure out what happened on a page. It’s now all about user pathways (which can jump from one experience to another across different devices), mapping out the full digital experience and connecting it with your offline experiences. We can talk about AI and many other tools, but you have to get the basics right. Do you have the right data quality to have all the right processes in place? And do you have a culture of experimentation to fuel the innovation on the right experiences for your customers?

– Ayuna Tckachenko, VP of Digital Analytics and Experimentation at American Express

4. Social commerce will move towards community commerce

“The future of CX is social commerce. But I don’t mean seeing something great on Instagram and clicking the link to buy it. It’ll be more about bringing your friends into purchase decisions and planning things in groups. Our customers travel together, so we’re looking at how we can bring them together in a space where they can talk and connect. And also, how we can actually engage with that group from a brand perspective, either through a digital experience or with a live human being.”

– Kellay Buckelew, VP of Digital Experience at Norwegian Cruise Line

5. Prioritizing data protection will be key

“In the realm of digitalization, 2024 will see a shift towards hyper-personalization, with AI-driven algorithms tailoring user experiences at an unprecedented level of granularity, while also prioritizing user consent and data protection in compliance with evolving privacy regulations.”

– Veronika Morozová, CRO Manager at IU International University of Applied Sciences

2024 Digital CX Trends

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

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6. Understanding mobile app behavior

“We’ve been saying mobile-first for quite some time now, but it’s important to understand what your app is actually used for and why your customers are using your app mobile versus desktop, especially in a hybrid world. And then you should build for that in mind because it might not be a one-size-fits-all solution and your customers might be using your app for different aspects.”

– Alexandra London, Head of Digital at Zoom

Get more insights into the latest trends in digital marketing and CX

Download our What’s Next in CX? 2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Report to dive into ten digital customer experience trends set to dominate the landscape next year, as identified by a survey of 2700+ business professionals in marketing, UX and product roles from retail, B2B, financial services, telco and many more.

Get the report to find out:

• Which digital trends digital professionals think will matter most
• How digital professionals think about these trends (and how to adapt to them)
• What you can do to prepare your business for 2024—and beyond

Plus, find out how our digital experience analytics platform is already putting these future trends into practice to help brands increase customer happiness and drive growth.

Solutions for Digital Marketing Teams

The post 6 trends in digital marketing to look out for in 2024 appeared first on Contentsquare.

Here’s a slightly concerning stat for you: Bounce rates rose to 49% in 2022., compared to 47% in 2021.

This might sound like an insignificant increase, but it actually means there are 4% fewer visitors progressing forward towards a possible conversion.

That’s far from ideal.

With nearly half of all traffic consisting of one-and-done visits, understanding your users’ needs and optimizing their experiences with your brand is pretty important.

But how can you create a truly holistic view of your customer experience and ensure their journey from A to B (via C, D, E and F, etc.) is seamless?

The answer: customer journey mapping.

What is customer journey mapping?

Customer journey mapping is a powerful tool that helps you understand your customers’ needs, pain points and experiences while identifying areas of improvement.

The process involves mapping out all your touchpoints and visualizing the entire customer journey, from awareness to purchase to post-purchase support.

This comprehensive view is key to optimizing your business KPIs—whether conversions or revenue—and making better, more informed decisions when it comes to your products, services and marketing strategy.

“A customer journey map is a very simple idea: a diagram that illustrates the steps your customer(s) go through in engaging with your company, whether it be a product, an online experience, retail experience, or a service, or any combination.” —Adam Richardson, Harvard Business Review

Intuitive visualizations of your customers journey.

I want this product!

4 easy steps to creating a journey map

We’ve outlined four simple steps you can take to start your customer journey mapping process. 

To drive results, follow these four steps:

1. Start by identifying your target customer. Who are you trying to reach with your product or service? Once you know your target customer, you can start to understand their needs and motivations.
2. Define key touchpoints. Where do customers interact with your brand? What steps do customers take to interact with your brand? This could include visiting your website, reading reviews, talking to customer support, and making a purchase on your app.
3. Map out your customer needs. For each touchpoint, identify your customer’s goals, needs, and pain points. What are they trying to achieve? What information do they need? What challenges are they facing?
4. Identify areas for improvement. Once you have a good understanding of the customer journey, you can identify areas for improvement. This could be as simple as making it easier for customers to find the information they need, streamlining the checkout process, or providing better customer support.

Once you’ve finished mapping your journey—depending on what industry you’re in—it could look something like this: 

Image source: Zapier

Things to think about during the process

Don’t forget this process takes time, effort and research—you can’t (and shouldn’t) do it alone. Here are a few key things to keep in mind:

• Use data throughout the process to inform your journey map. It’s important to use customer data and insights from website analytics (like Contentsquare), customer surveys, and social media to make informed decisions.
• Get input from your teams across your organization. Your journey map should be a collaborative effort. Get input from your sales, marketing, customer support and product development teams.
• Review and update your journey map regularly. Your customers are constantly evolving, so your journey map should be too. Ensure it’s accurate and up-to-date by reviewing it on a regular basis. 

In retail banking? Read this blog for our 7 steps to creating a retail banking customer journey map. 

The benefits of creating a journey map

Don’t get us wrong, breaking down your customer journey phase by phase is a laborious task but it’s crucial to ensuring the experience you provide is relevant and—most importantly—frictionless. 

If you’re still on the fence about journey mapping, here are three benefits to convince you to get started now:

You will (almost) instantly improve your customer experience

Journey mapping is an eye-opening process. Once you start digging into your customer journeys, you’re likely to identify areas of frustration pretty quickly. 

For retailers, for example, journey mapping is beneficial for pinpointing areas where they might be losing customers or where cart abandonment is high. 

And knowing where customers struggle will help you prioritize the right optimizations, improve your customers’ experience and even fuel ideas for your experimentation strategy. 

You can optimize your marketing campaigns

Marketers can use the insights from the journey mapping process to create targeted campaigns that promote products to the right audience, at the right time, and in the right way. 

Journey mapping can help you level-up your marketing strategy by helping you:

• Identify different customer segments 
• Coordinate efforts across multiple channels 
• Set specific objectives aligned with customer goals
• Improve campaign measurement

You can use it to develop new products and services

Journey mapping isn’t just for marketing teams. It can play a key role in identifying new product and service opportunities that meet the needs of your customers.

Product owners and dev teams that closely align product development to their customer journeys can reduce the risk of product failure and increase the likelihood of successful adoption. 

It’s also a great way to gather customer feedback, which can be invaluable in shaping new product development and identifying unmet needs or areas for improvement.

Create a journey map that drives results with Contentsquare

Qualitative surveys and interviews are extremely powerful tools for gathering insights for your journey map. 

But combine that with quantitative data and you’ll hit the sweet spot. 

Contentsquare’s Digital Experience Analytics platform provides qualitative and quantitative insights into your customers’ online behavior in real-time—and provides you with a range of tools to help you build a killer customer journey map, including:

• Customer Journey Analysis: See how users progress through your site and app, page by page, from entry to exit.
• Session Replay:  By watching real-time recordings of how your customers interact with your website you can instantly see where your customers struggle the most. 
• Zone-Based Heatmaps: Heatmaps allow you to see exactly where customers are clicking, scrolling and hovering on your website to understand what content is most engaging and where you might need to make improvements.
• Form Analytics: Discover how customers interact with your website’s forms and identify what’s working and where customers get stuck or abandon your forms.

Remember, journey mapping is not a one-time process. With Contentsquare you can create a comprehensive journey map and continuously improve on it—helping you stay agile and responsive to ever-changing customer needs.

Intuitive visualizations of your customers journey.

I want this product!

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