Automotive Industry Blog - ContentSquare

Retail Sees Shift to Mobile Driving More than Half of Revenue and Nearly 80% of Traffic, According to New Report

Contentsquare — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 19:43:54 +0000

Report Shows Soaring Ad Costs and Declining Traffic Drove Cost Per Visit Up 12.4% for Brands

New York, NY—March 20, 2024— Retailers have a key opportunity as they face soaring costs on ecommerce’s most critical acquisition channels, Meta and Google, which have driven up costs per visit by 12.4%–above average by 3%-according to Contentsquare’s new 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report. The report highlights influential data and actionable insights retailers can take to meet their customers where they are. Although retailers are hit the hardest, they also have a massive opportunity when considering traffic and revenue trends, especially on mobile, which has become the leading source for ecommerce traffic globally (77%) and accounting for 56% of revenues. With investments in digital customer experience, data shows retailers can experience massive gains in customer retention, conversion, and loyalty.

“Consumers are strongly voicing their preferences, but data shows brands still have room to meet their expectations. How does that translate to business impact? What brands are losing by not improving customer experience is material, and business leaders need to ask themselves how they can capitalize on understanding customer preferences in order to deliver value,” said Jean-Christophe Pitié, Chief Marketing and Partnerships Officer, Contentsquare. “The data demonstrates a missed opportunity for brands on mobile. It’s clear that they need to evolve the way they think about mobile and optimize the entire mobile journey, not simply the pages or formatting, so it’s imperative to create more seamless experiences.”

Key Data and Takeaways for Brands:

Despite the growth in mobile traffic share, conversion rates fell 5.8% as shoppers tend to make shorter, micro-visits while using mobile devices, and spend 60% less time per session viewing fewer pages than on desktop.
Easy-to-remedy frustrations, including slow page loads and poor visitor responses, reduced revenue by $0.56 per visit.
- Retailers can combat frustration by combining audience insights with proactive monitoring to consistently deliver experiences that delight their customers.
“Growth at all costs” is outdated.
- Instead of focusing simply on driving traffic, retailers need to shift their focus to improving the overall customer experience in order to drive profitability.
Conversions are 77% higher on desktop than on mobile
Retail traffic is increasingly dependent on paid, as opposed to organic, sources, with paid driving 42.6% of visits and nearly half (47.8%) of all new visits to ecommerce sites.
- Instead of chasing higher traffic volume, retailers’ best acquisition strategy may be a retention strategy. Knowing what constitutes an engaging, satisfying experience which encourages customers to stay, convert, and return is key.
Apps provide a unique opportunity for retailers and they provide a critical role in delivering the returning customer experience, attracting nearly 4X the share of returning visitors compared with mobile web, according to Contentsquare’s 2024 Digital Experience Benchmark Report.
- Although apps are typically positioned as a means to foster strong relationships with existing customers, brands were able to expand the breadth of their audience using apps last year – new visitors accounted for 15% of all app visits, up from 10% the prior year.

Download the full report here.

# # #

Methodology

The Retail Digital Experience Benchmark is a set of aggregated and anonymized insights of digital performance. Strict aggregation measures are employed to ensure anonymity. These measures include requirements on analysis set size, diversity, and consistency, in order to present credible and reliable information that is insulated from concentration risk.

To qualify for inclusion in the year-over-year analysis, each site must have operated throughout the entire analysis period, in this case October 2022 through December 2023. Frustration analyses are calculated for October 2023. All year-over-year analyses are Q4 2023 / Q4 2022. All other analyses represent Q4 2023. Additional data hygiene factors are applied to ensure accurate metric calculation. Additional data hygiene factors are applied to ensure accurate metric calculation.

This edition of the Retail Digital Experience Benchmark analyzed more than 25 billion sessions and 130 billion page views across 1,673 websites.

About Contentsquare

Contentsquare delivers the power to make the digital world more human. 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. The global leader in digital experience analytics, Contentsquare helps brands everywhere transform the way they do business, allowing them to take action at enterprise scale and build customer trust with security, privacy, and accessibility. More than 1,000 leading brands use Contentsquare to grow their business, deliver more customer happiness and move with greater agility in a constantly changing world. Its insights power the customer experience on over 1 million websites worldwide. For more information, visit www.contentsquare.com

Media Contact:

Erica Ashner

Erica.Ashner@Contentsquare.com

The post Retail Sees Shift to Mobile Driving More than Half of Revenue and Nearly 80% of Traffic, According to New Report appeared first on Contentsquare.

Nearly Sixty Percent of Brands See Drop in Online Traffic and Consumption in 2023, According to New Report

Contentsquare — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 12:07:17 +0000

Contentsquare Finds Rising Ad Spend and Falling Traffic Increase Cost Per Visit by over 9%
Report Also Reveals Frustration Has Increased, Impacting 2 in 5 Online Visits in 2023

New York, NY—February 14, 2024 —Digital ad spend is set to surpass $740 billion in 2024, yet website traffic, consumption and conversion were all down last year, according to the Contentsquare 2024 Digital Experience Benchmark Report. In fact, 55% of all sites saw lower traffic, 58% saw session consumption fall, and conversion decreased by 5.5% according to the report. Contentsquare, a global leader in digital experience analytics, also found that 40% of all online visits included avoidable friction, including technical website errors, slow page loads and rage clicks.

“With a dip in global web traffic this year and the cost per visit rising almost 10%, making every visit count is business critical,” said Jean-Christophe Pitié, Chief Marketing and Partnerships Officer, Contentsquare. “We know from our previous consumer research that shoppers are leaving sites as a result of frustrations that could be easily resolved, such as slow page loads and rage clicks.”

While fixing frustration remains an utmost priority across industries, efforts to optimize mobile app performance are paying off, with apps recording steady customer engagement in 2023 (14 pages viewed per online visit up from 13.8 the previous year) and a conversion rate of 5.6% — 3x the conversion rate of mobile web traffic. Furthermore, app users spend 64% more time in-app than visitors spend on mobile sites.

Mobile, in particular, is the new competitive battlefield. We’ve seen gains in terms of engagement for apps this year, but mobile optimization as a whole is not as mature as it could be given the intelligence we have today on customer behaviors and preferences.

Jean-Christophe Pitié, Chief Marketing and Partnerships Officer, Contentsquare

Contentsquare’s latest Benchmark Report further revealed:

Mobile Visits Are Micro-Visits

Despite mobile driving 70% of website traffic in Q4 2023, browsing time on mobile web is 60% shorter than on desktop. These “micro-visits” contribute to a decline in conversion rates, highlighting the gap between consumer expectations and current mobile web optimization practices.

A Shift to Paid Sources, With Search Driving 4x Conversion of Paid Social

Paid sources drove one-third of all traffic to websites this year, and 36% of new visits. For mobile web, paid sources account for 40% of traffic — twice as much as for desktop. While overall traffic is down, paid social is one of the few channels that saw traffic growth in 2023. However, social traffic struggles to convert compared to paid search, which still drives 4x the conversion rate of paid social. The report indicated that visits from social are less intentional, with a 41% higher bounce rate than paid search. Visitors from social may have inadvertently tapped through to a website because of a compelling story or influencer without the intention embodied by visitors coming from paid search.

The High Cost of Frustration

Frustrating visitors is a surefire way to waste visits. Sites that are slow to load (those taking more than three seconds) and perform poorly in responding to visitor interactions combine to reduce the engagement by 15%.

Rage clicks (clicking at least three times in less than two seconds) continue to frustrate visitors, and were found in 5.5% of all online visits.

To learn more, download the full Benchmark report here.

# # #

Methodology

This edition of the Digital Experience Benchmark analyzed more than 43 billion sessions and 200 billion page views across 3,590 websites.

The 10 industries analyzed include:

Consumer Packaged goods
Energy, Utilities, & Construction
Financial Services
Manufacturing
Media
Retail
Services
Software
Travel & Hospitality
Telecommunications

The Digital Experience Benchmark is a set of aggregated and anonymized insights into digital performance. Strict aggregation measures are employed to ensure anonymity. These measures include requirements on analysis set size, diversity, and consistency, to present credible and reliable information that is insulated from concentration risk.

To qualify for inclusion in the year-over-year analysis, each site must have operated throughout the entire analysis period, in this case, October 2022 through December 2023. For current period analysis, the analysis period is Q4 2023. Additional hygiene factors are applied to ensure accurate metric calculation.

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 1,300 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. Founded in Paris and with offices around the world, Contentsquare is backed by leading high quality investors, including funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Bpifrance, Canaan, Eurazeo, Highland Europe, KKR, LionTree, Sixth Street and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. For more information, visit www.contentsquare.com.

Media Contact:

Contentsquare

Erica Ashner

erica.ashner@contentsquare.com

The post Nearly Sixty Percent of Brands See Drop in Online Traffic and Consumption in 2023, According to New Report appeared first on Contentsquare.

Improving automotive customer journeys with Contentsquare

neabjorkqvist — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 14:47:32 +0000

At a recent Contentsquare client event, we were lucky enough to hear from Callum Barker-Nicol, Business Analyst in Product and Platform Engineering at Auto Trader about optimizing their automotive customer journey.

In his talk, Callum discussed how he and his team used Contentsquare alongside other tools during the launch of its new Vehicle Insight product.

The UK’s largest online vehicle marketplace

Auto Trader is the UK’s largest marketplace for buyers and sellers of vehicles. Today, visitors to its website can search from a selection of over 465,000 vehicles.

Over 13,000 vehicle retailers use Auto Trader’s B2B Portal to manage their digital forecourt, upload images and descriptions to build the adverts that appear on the consumer-facing website, and respond to queries from prospective customers.

More and more retailers also choose to manage their online orders in Auto Trader’s portal, meaning the company must ensure it can provide the automotive customer experience those retailers expect.

Callum works on Auto Trader’s data and insight products for the company’s retail customers—a role that keeps him extremely busy due to how popular the products are:

“In the last 28 days we’ve had over 26,000 users in our Retail Portal, and 40% of all ads on the Auto Trader website are created there,” he said. “It’s used by over 13,000 retailers, all the way from small dealerships up to the largest franchise groups.”

Struggling to find the right data

One of the unintended drawbacks of having created a Retailer Portal with so much functionality was that it wasn’t as well-integrated as it could have been.

As Callum put it: “We recognized that whilst there’s loads of great insight and functionality inside Retailer Portal, but because things were built at different times they didn’t necessarily line up as well as we’d have liked them to.”

Callum and his team worried that retailers were taking too much time to reach the data they needed due to products being siloed in different areas of the platform.

This meant there was a risk some retailers were not benefitting from the full functionality of the portal.

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

I want to start!

Using Contentsquare to investigate the problem

Callum’s team used Contentsquare to dig into user behavior in the portal, investigating automotive customer journeys, looking for broken journeys as well as points where customers were taking more steps than they needed.

“We wanted to understand more about the potential problem and see if we could validate that there was an issue,” Callum said.

By using Contentsquare to understand user behavior, the team was also able to see which products were getting less traction because users weren’t able to find them intuitively.

As part of this discovery phase, Callum and his team realized that many data points in the retailer portal were siloed in different areas and not integrated well enough into users’ core journeys, as highlighted by Contentsquare.

“This meant that retailers really had to seek out the data they needed and that some had been neglecting certain products because they didn’t know where to find them,” Callum explained.

“As a business, we stress the importance of data as part of decision-making. But many data points across our retailer portal were siloed in different areas and not integrated well enough into some of the core journeys that we saw users going through when analyzing in Contentsquare.”
— Callum Barker-Nicol, Business Analyst, Product and Platform Engineering at Auto Trader

One specific negative impact of this siloed data was that Auto Trader’s Market Insight product was getting fewer visits than Callum and his team wanted.

Digging deeper into automotive customer journeys

After this initial discovery phase, the team wanted to go further.

Alongside Contentsquare they used other methods, including the business intelligence tool Looker, face-to-face interviews with a variety of retail customers, and user testing of proposed UX solutions.

“We had our problem statement and key questions, and this is where we dug into Contentsquare some more,” Callum said. “We wanted to drill down into specific journeys where we knew that we might be able to make some improvements and start prototyping solutions.”

Callum and his team used Contentsquare’s Zoning Analysis to find out exactly where in the platform users were clicking. “Contentsquare was really useful again there,” Callum said.

At this point the team used the insights they had gathered to prototype potential solutions, both on paper and using high-level wireframes. Using the project management tool Miro and the collaborative interface design tool Figma, the team progressed towards producing what Callum described as “a high-fidelity prototype”.

From that, they came up with the final design—a new dashboard-based Vehicle Insight product.

“This is ultimately what we rolled out to customers to solve the problem that we’d used Contentsquare to identify at the start and to provide a much richer automotive customer journey and experience,” Callum said.

This dashboard breaks down how retailers’ live adverts are performing on the Auto Trader website, ranking the ad’s quality, whether there are enough images, how many leads it’s generated, how the price of the car compares with Auto Trader’s valuations, market health and more.

Intuitive visualizations of your customers journey.

I want this product!

“What we did was pull together all our data into one place so customers could be served it in one quick glance as they were coming into the platform. That’s a massive time saver for them.”

“Contentsquare helped us throughout that process. It helped us identify the optimal journey for us to embed this new solution to start with, and which products were not being fully utilized. We also dug into why that might be, whether due to broken journeys or siloes or just too many steps.”
— Callum Barker-Nicol, Business Analyst, Product and Platform Engineering at Auto Trader

The combination of user interviews and Contentsquare’s Customer Journey Analysis helped his team identify the top priority for their customers and which areas of the portal were more heavily used. That helped them decide the most valuable data to add to their new dashboard-based solution.

“Contentsquare also complemented some of the raw data that we captured in Looker,” Callum added, “because Contentsquare is a more visual platform, which helped us see patterns in the data quicker.”

From Discovery to Business As Usual (BAU)

Auto Trader rolled out the Vehicle Insight solution to their 13,000-plus retail customers. “It got great traction and feedback,” Callum said, though, his team wouldn’t have known that if they hadn’t immediately started measuring the success of the solution post-launch.

They started tracking sessions and actions in Looker. Then they set up an internal feedback area in Slack for customers to post feedback about the solution. They also got direct feedback from some customers.

And the last piece of that tracking puzzle? Contentsquare.

As Callum explains: “Obviously we wanted to see what was happening on that page and how well it was performing. With Contentsquare we’ve been able to see exactly how people were interacting with that page, how much time they were spending in certain areas, and how many views the page was getting. We can even dig into some of the session replays as well to see what people were doing on the page, which gave us some really great insights.”

Based on those insights from Contentsquare, the company has been able to continue making small tweaks and developments to improve performance even further.

“Contentsquare was a key tool for us while we were building the Vehicle Insight product. It helped us build an understanding of what users were doing before and after the launch. We fed that into our development process and have continued to do that since. It also complemented some of our other tools and techniques.”
— Callum Barker-Nicol, Business Analyst, Product and Platform Engineering at Auto Trader

What’s next for Auto Trader?

Callum and his team plan to roll out even more functionality into the Retailer Portal, including a trended valuations tool allowing retailers to see a powerful view of historic and forecasted vehicle valuations.

“Contentsquare will continue to be a really critical part of our product development toolkit on exciting projects that we’ve got to come, and it has become BAU as we continue to improve products such as Vehicle Insight,” Callum concluded.

The post Improving automotive customer journeys with Contentsquare appeared first on Contentsquare.

Automotive experience insights and optimization strategies from Toyota

Contentsquare — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 14:14:25 +0000

The automotive industry’s focus on digital experience has gone up a gear in recent years. Along with competing over the best-engineered products, manufacturers are now competing to offer customers the best-engineered digital automotive experience possible.

We recently sat down with Michael Roosen, Managing Director of Toyota & Lexus Belgium (who we’ll refer to as Toyota for short, to talk about the importance of customer experience (CX) in the automotive industry and to Toyota in particular).

Watch the full interview with Michael below to learn all about Toyota’s customer-centric approach to digital, and to hear from Michael on the crucial role Contentsquare plays in Toyota Belgium’s success.

And keep reading to find out three insights Michael shared with us about how to optimize the digital experience and make your automotive company’s digital objectives serve its business objectives.

Why is the digital automotive experience so important?

Today, the car dealership is rarely a customer’s first port of call when purchasing a vehicle.

Many customers now prefer to buy cars online; the market for online car buying is projected to reach USD 722 billion by 2030.

And even if they aren’t willing to purchase a car without sitting in it first, they’re still likely to check out your website before paying you a visit.

“In automotive today, the digital experience is the first point of contact,” Michael says. “They could be on their mobile or their laptop, but the first point of interaction is almost always a digital platform.”

And it isn’t just first-time buyers that automotive companies are serving digitally. It’s just (if not more) important to cater to existing customers through digital channels.

This decade has seen the business model for automotive change (thanks in part to the emergence of electric vehicles, or EVs) from securing one-off purchases to driving additional revenue through recurring services and products.

“Automotive is all about loyalty,” says Michael. “Customers will come back after their first purchase for services, maintenance and information about their car and new services that are available.”

As the most convenient touchpoint for many customers, digital channels are critical for nurturing loyalty, and are an intrinsic component of today’s automotive customer lifecycle.

“A physical contact with the customer is still important,” says Michael. “But in-between those real-world interactions we have a digital platform to stay in touch, keep up a connection, and nurture loyalty—all to the benefit of the customer.”

That’s why Michael considers digital customer experience “fundamental” to Toyota Belgium’s objectives, and why he believes that the company has to be “the best retailer online” to succeed as a business.

So how does Toyota Belgium go about achieving that goal? For the full story, you’ll have to watch the interview.

But for now, here’s three insights into optimizing the digital automotive experience that Michael shared in our conversation.

1. Data analytics is key to improving the automotive experience

Toyota Belgium’s guiding principle is customer centricity. They aim for every interaction a customer has with the brand, whether physical or digital, to be the best, most efficient and satisfying interaction possible.

To execute on this principle of putting the customer first, Toyota Belgium must first understand the customer. And that’s where data analytics tools like Contentsquare come in.

“We make all our decisions based on data,” says Michael. “We use various tools, including Contentsquare, to study the customer journey and understand our customers’ behavior, so we can offer them the best possible experience going forward.”

Toyota Belgium’s digital team A/B test every campaign they run so that they can assess the impact of their decisions on customer behavior, and optimize accordingly.

“When a customer is confused by a call to action or campaign, we’ll notice it because the data tells us,” says Michael. “We’re constantly looking at whether things work or not, and then taking actions to improve, improve, improve.”

2. A stand-out automotive experience relies on tech AND talent

Speaking of “improve, improve, improve”, another of Toyota Belgium’s fundamental principles is Kaizen, a.k.a. continuous improvement.

In prioritizing innovation, Toyota Belgium is far from an outlier in an industry that’s always been on the leading edge of innovation—a tendency Michael puts down to vehicles being “the center of the life of our customers”.

However, not all automotive companies have moved as fast as others, and the more complacent companies have wound up eating the dust of their forward-thinking and moving competitors.

Determined that Toyota Belgium doesn’t take its foot off the gas and fall behind, Michael has invested heavily in both technology and (an often overlooked element of digital transformation) talent.

“You can have the best website, the best tools and platforms, but if you don’t have the best talent to run these then those tools will be suboptimal and underutilized,” says Michael. “That’s why I’m proud to have created a digital team that’s one of the best—if not the best—in Belgium’s automotive industry.”

So remember: Talent might not quite trump technology when it comes to CX, but it’s absolutely key to unlocking the huge potential of your technology and digital channels.

3. The digital and physical should dovetail for a great automotive experience

As far as Michael is concerned, Toyota Belgium’s digital and business objectives are “one and the same”. After all, if the company fails to perform on digital, its business performance will necessarily be compromised.

The digital experience is therefore of paramount importance for Toyota Belgium. But this doesn’t mean that the physical retail experience can be treated as an afterthought.

“We need to be excellent on digital objectives and in-store experiences,” he says. “It’s about consistency: Customers need to have the best experience on our digital platforms and have that same level of experience when they come to our dealership for a test drive.”

Occasionally, the digital and physical customer experience will divert from each other—but will end up dove-tailing in a complementary manner.

“When a customer comes to us with a very specific issue that can’t be solved through digital channels alone, we’ll bring a solution to life outside the digital experience” explains Michael.

“However, we’ll learn from this, and integrate the solution we work out into our digital automotive experience for future customers.”

Build a first-rate automotive experience with Contentsquare

If you’re worried your automotive company will be overtaken by competitors with a better digital automotive experience than yours, it could be time to invest in digital experience analytics.

Contentsquare’s Digital Analytics Cloud will tell you how your website’s visitors and app’s users are behaving at every stage of the automotive customer journey, so you can quickly figure out how they’re feeling about your experience and make improvements wherever necessary.

Every day, our platform drives real business outcomes (including customer retention, conversions and overall revenue) for automotive companies like Toyota Belgium—and can put your business in the fast lane to digital automotive experience excellence.

So why not take us for a test drive?

The post Automotive experience insights and optimization strategies from Toyota appeared first on Contentsquare.

INVITATION: Defining CX’s role in the digital world of tomorrow

Contentsquare — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 19:08:42 +0000

Join Contentsquare, Zoom, Nespresso, Dell, Walmart, Microsoft and Others for a Half-Day Virtual Event

Customer experience is increasingly defining brands and becoming a factor that can soar a brand to new heights or sink its ship. It’s shaping the future of online engagement between brand and audience and becoming the battleground on which market leaders (and losers) will be determined. During COVID-19, brands invested in their online presence, and we’re only now beginning to fully understand if and how those efforts paid off.

How CX is shaping the future of digital will be explored at Contentsquare’s 2021 CX Circle event. This event brings together heavy hitters from various industries to discuss trends shaping digital experience, and share expertise and best practices for how to create, deliver and leverage CX that’s meaningful to audiences and valuable to businesses. Whether it be to connect, to learn, or to buy, our digital lives have been reimagined, our behaviors changed, all due to the efforts brands have put into redefining CX as a part of their identity.

As Contentsquare’s CMO, I find myself having daily conversations with brands about the changing landscape of digital marketing and how it’s become more challenging to anticipate and meet the changing needs of consumers. This industry is moving at lightning speed, and the need to focus on customers, combined with the pressure to deliver valuable experiences with a lens for privacy, presents a unique challenge. We have designed this event to provide marketers, product leaders, UX/UI experts, digital and analytics professionals and ecommerce pros with expertise, insights and connections that will both inspire and offer practical advice.

CX Circle attendees will leave the event with the critical elements they need to stay competitive, push boundaries and win customers with their CX. We’ll learn from leaders at Nespresso, Microsoft, Sonos, Dell, Walmart, Contentsquare and others, about:

How digital investments are a brand differentiator
Best practices to leverage data for customer-centric innovation
How to maximize app performance to drive conversion and ROI
Building a digital marketing strategy that bridges the gap between digital and brick-and-mortar
Important steps to take to deliver experiences that are accessible by all
Testing your way to success

I’ll be hosting a fireside chat with Zoom’s CMO Janine Pelosi, which will touch on the importance of using experiences to delight customers. In an age where enterprises have gone digital for communication and collaboration, we’ll talk about what Zoom learned during a year of explosive growth, and how customer happiness is a driving force behind innovation.

Join us for this half-day virtual event that will challenge the way brands approach digital experiences and drive us to think beyond the norm, by bringing together some of the most influential minds in digital marketing. Register for CX Circle here.

If you can’t make it, we understand. We will be sharing a lot of content post-event, so you and your colleagues don’t miss out. Just register and we’ll ensure you receive those as they become available. Who knows, you might win a Peloton, too!

I look forward to seeing you there!

-Niki

The post INVITATION: Defining CX’s role in the digital world of tomorrow appeared first on Contentsquare.

Is Disruption Coming To The Auto Sector? We Quizzed Two Experts For Their Viewpoints

Lorraine Ryshin — Wed, 09 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The end of dealerships, online vehicle shopping, pure players, smart cars… Has the auto sector been speeding down the digital transformation highway? We quizzed two digital auto experts to find out how disruptive the auto industry is about to get…

Our first interview is with Jérôme Jean, Digital & Regional Marketing Manager of Toyota in France. Interviewed by David Robin, Associate Director of Colombus Consulting, we learned about the automotive landscape in the digital space.

Colombus Consulting: Let’s dive straight in. What does a successful customer experience (CX) in the auto sector look like?

Jérôme Jean: It’s pretty simple: it’s an experience that is completely linear — from the search engine or website all the way to the dealership visit. These last few years, Toyota has focused heavily on digital to improve the customer journey.

It was crucial for auto manufacturers, whose distribution network has not evolved in 30 years, to become more agile. The aim was to offer a renewed buying experience with a mainly digital pre-sale journey.

We thought about how we positioned our brand and our vehicles at every touchpoint. What experience do we want our customers to have in the dealership? And today we have a new challenge: customers show up very well informed and really challenge our salespeople…

Particularly nowadays, competition is so fierce…

Yes, that’s true of other manufacturers’ eCommerce platforms, but also with pure players who have a radically different approach. There is also one thing no competitor can get around: having actual dealerships so that customers can have a live experience and “feel” the product.

So does that mean the auto sector is moving from hardware to software..?

Yes, absolutely. First of all because you need to add a digital dimension to the dealership experience, which requires having one single database — in our case, Salesforce.

The software is going to continue to evolve fast with smart cars. Tomorrow, diagnosis, preventive interventions, vehicle upgrades — all of those will happen remotely. The auto sector’s approach to marketing will shift increasingly to mobile. We will be able to offer new apps and services to make our customers’ lives easier. Manufacturers will finally connect with their customers on a daily basis.

“The auto sector’s approach to marketing will shift increasingly to mobile.”

Where are we at with online sales today?

The online retail market is gaining traction. All manufacturers, especially in England and Scandinavia, have been testing online sales of new vehicles. 2020 will be a pivotal year with the emergence of online sales platforms. The real question is: what is being sold? Selling new vehicles is the Holy Grail… except that today, the used vehicle market is much more mature. But will it work? I don’t think that online sales will dominate the market or spell the end of dealerships. In my opinion, digital will be one extra sales channel that will hopefully allow us to market to a younger customer base.

Next, our own Geoffrey Vion interviewed Brice Renvoizé, Digital & Experience Manager at SEAT Groupe Volkswagen on marketing, data and CX in the automotive sector.

Contentsquare: How did SEAT restructure to meet the digital challenges of a fast-evolving sector?

Brice Renvoizé: We transformed our digital marketing strategy 2 years ago, with a restructuring of teams based on data and customer experience. Today, our Influence division is responsible for increasing brand awareness and our Digital Customer Experience division is in charge of optimizing the customer journey. The customer journey is changing fast and we’re seeing a decline in dealership visits.

Has this changed your mission at all?

Our objective today is to prove the business value of digital, and to drive more traffic to our dealerships, which is where 100% of our sales still happen. Drive to Store is our main KPI and all our digital innovation takes into account the dealerships as a key part of the buyer journey.

The SEAT ID is an example of how our digital strategy is evolving. This unique client/prospect identifier will remove all barriers between our digital interfaces, dealerships and smart cars. It guarantees a friction-free experience in both the physical and digital world — it’s the ability to keep members in our ecosystem, which includes offering new services.

New services?

Yes, third-party services (music streaming, paying for gas…) are included in a monthly payment thanks to the connectivity revolution in the auto sector.

On the product side, we’ve already disrupted the status quo by launching a “no strings attached” car. A Netflix-type subscription where you can return/exchange your car and change your mileage — all this in an easy way, with no fees. Every last obstacle in the experience has been removed! With this level of service, we’re answering the needs of the new generation, who is more interested in usage than ownership.

Will people be buying their car online anytime soon?

No, not yet. We all still need contact with a product that remains a unique type of purchase. But digital can simplify the process: online deals with financing offers, estimates for a trade-in…

So it’s not the end of dealerships just yet… But how do they connect to digital?

We can remove the barriers between the two. We measure showroom visits that come from mobile traffic. The information shared during the experience on seat.fr. makes it easier for the vendor to understand the client.

The experience both online and offline still needs to improve thanks to considerable personalization. The key to personalization will be customer ID and data.

Can you describe your data strategy?

It helps us save on acquisition and focus instead on conversions. How? By personalizing messages depending on profiles and segments, by way of optimizing touchpoints to increase conversions. Ads we will go even further with the SEAT ID and the smart car. Today, data is used for marketing, tomorrow it will be used for business and service.

Hero image credit: SergeyBitos, Adobe Stock

The post Is Disruption Coming To The Auto Sector? We Quizzed Two Experts For Their Viewpoints appeared first on Contentsquare.

The Rise of Automotive UX

alexandre — Tue, 12 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A guest post by Lillian Xiao, a user experience designer for a large European automaker.

Automakers are designing the next generation of cars with user experience (UX) at the forefront. The merging of physical and digital—driven by electrification, connectivity, self-driving technology, and fluid ownership models—will give rise to unprecedented user experiences. The most successful automakers will bring technologies and services together in ways that are usable and delightful for the end customer.

In the future, cars will resemble our smartphones more than they’ll resemble the cars that we know today—machines composed of gears, fluids, and thousands of moving parts. Instead, cars will be connected devices on wheels, part of a large, complex network of people, devices, and infrastructure. Automakers are already bracing for this transition, where digital blends with the physical, and user experience will become increasingly important to help people navigate the world.

Industry 4.0: A blend of digital and physical

The physical world around us will become more digital and connected in what experts are calling the 4th industrial revolution, or industry 4.0. Cars are just one example of how this transformation is taking place. We can measure this by looking at how many lines of code cars have today. Two decades ago, cars had on average 1 million lines of code. Today, cars have 100 million lines of code. Experts predict that before long, cars will have at least 200 million lines of code.

For automakers, the increasingly digital framework poses new challenges. A major challenge for established automakers is bridging two vastly different production cycles from the automotive and software domains. Today, a car can take anywhere from 2 to 5 years to go from concept to production. However, software development cycles are fast and iterative, constantly introducing new features and replacing old features that no longer meet user needs.

The discrepancy is most obvious in today’s in-car infotainment systems. User interfaces come in and out of fashion quickly, which means that digital infotainment systems can become outdated by the time cars are introduced to market. The result is that infotainment systems are routinely ranked as the least satisfying feature for car owners. Among other things, this discrepancy reflects the challenges that large automotive companies—also known as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs)—face in transitioning to a new era of mobility.

Automotive UX

For the automotive industry, new technology paves the way for new models of mobility. While software competence is the necessary first step, mobility will eventually be about usability, trust, and delight. UX may become the differentiating factor for cars in the future.

User experience has its origins in the software industry. At its core, UX is about designing solutions that meet human needs, often through the medium of technology. Oftentimes, technological solutions are introduced to a market, only for its creators to discover that there’s a mismatch in the market, product, or simply wrong timing.

In this way, UX provides a user-centered approach, as well as a set of practices, for automakers to test new concepts and solutions across a blend of new digital, physical, and service offerings.

Near-term automotive trends and UX opportunities

How can automakers take a user-centered approach to fuel innovation in the auto industry? Below, I explore four areas of near-term growth—based largely on public discussion around these topics—and look briefly at how UX can help automakers identify opportunities for innovation.

1. Electric cars become more affordable

As battery components become cheaper, electric vehicles (EVs) will become more affordable. Bloomberg predicts that in 2025, worldwide EV sales will reach 11 million, and in 2030, EV sales will reach 30 million.

Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance (NEF)

The experience of driving an EV is—or perhaps should be—considerably different than driving a car with an internal combustible engine (ICE). Unlike gas-powered cars, many EVs have single-pedal driving (without the need to switch gears), faster acceleration, and simpler car maintenance (without the upkeep of a complex system of gears and moving parts).

In reality, technology never advances in isolation, which means that entire ecosystems will emerge around EVs. Vehicle charging infrastructure is just one example of this. It takes much longer to charge an EV than to fuel a gas-powered car, which creates opportunities to help drivers make use of this idle time. UX can help us understand things like where drivers prefer to charge their cars, and what drivers want to do while their cars are charging. Today, I see Tesla owners waiting in their cars at the edge of shopping mall parking lots. As EVs gain wider adopting, the experience of charging will undoubtedly improve from what it is today.

2. Cars become connected digital platforms

A recent consumer report revealed that drivers want their cars to provide the same communication and entertainment capabilities as their phones. Automakers are responding by introducing concepts for large touchscreens, voice recognition, gesture recognition, and heads-up displays to assist drivers in accessing content while driving.

Infotainment systems—the host of in-car features that include music, navigation, and phone integration—has a long history dating back to the first in-car radio in the 1930s. From there, navigation systems were introduced in the 1980s, and the first hard drives and Bluetooth systems were introduced in the 2000s. Recent focus has been on 5G, which many anticipate will provide high-speed mobile connectivity for networked devices in the future.

Byton Interior; Source: Sean O’Kane, The Verge

3. Cars begin to drive themselves

Self-driving technology is already embedded in today’s cars in the form of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Features like adaptive cruise control (on freeways) and automatic parking can help drivers become more accustomed to the idea of semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicles.

Automakers can take these opportunities to educate consumers about the capabilities of autonomous technology, and to design experiences that prioritize trust and safety. A recent AAA study revealed that at least 2 out of 3 drivers using ADAS features report trusting the technology in their cars. Positive experiences can play an important cultural role in helping consumers become more comfortable with self-driving technology.

Tesla Autopilot; Source: Electrek

4. Car ownership becomes more fluid

Car ownership has taken on many forms in recent years. Vehicle owners can make a living, or earn extra cash, by using their cars to drive people and goods around. Peer-to-peer platforms like Turo and Getaround allow car owners to rent out their vehicles, and ZipCar allows members to rent from its fleets of cars in half-hour increments. These shared mobility options help car owners and consumers determine the mobility models that work best for them in their own lives.

UX can play a central role in helping automakers understand the user journeys related to different models of shared mobility. For example, understanding a rider’s journey, from booking a ride to leaving the car, can fuel innovation at different steps along the way. With shared mobility, there’s a clear need for innovative experiences that cater to a growing demographic of people who are less interested in owning and driving a car.

Looking to the future & implications for UX

If we assume that technology continues to progress in these four areas—as many automakers and experts believe today—then before we know it, the world may begin to look very different.

RethinkX, an independent think tank, predicts that by 2030, “95% of U.S. passenger miles traveled will be served by on-demand autonomous electric vehicles owned by fleets, not individuals, in a new business model called ‘transport-as-a-service’ (TaaS).”

This seems to reflect what many in the automotive industry are bracing for—conversion to an electric autonomous future. In this future scenario, it may be more practical to be driven than to drive yourself.

RethinkX analysis based on U.S. Department of Transportation data; Source: RethinkX

If these assumptions play out, then UX will play a key role in helping companies provide enjoyable, meaningful, and personalized experiences that merge the digital and physical.

Design Council, an independent charity and advisor to the UK government on design, predicts:

“There will be far more use-appropriate products as we go into the future. You will have less of the kind of car that does everything for everyone, and you’ll have more specific-use vehicles out there. Your day-to-day commute may be answered by the hire car in the city, which isn’t yours; it’s cleaned regularly, it’s there when you need it and it’s just functional. Which means that the car I choose to buy is the car that suits my other needs, whether that’s for family, recreation or holidays.”

The further we look into the future, the more difficult it is to predict user needs. However, it’s clear that UX will become increasingly important for the auto industry moving forward.

If you want to learn more about building future-proof digital experiences for the auto sector, click here.

The post The Rise of Automotive UX appeared first on Contentsquare.

To drive a higher conversion rate automotive industry needs to focus on digital experiences

Brillixa Herdhiana — Tue, 01 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Efrat David, former CMO at Contentsquare, explains why focusing on improving digital experiences is critical to driving a higher conversion rate in the automotive industry.

A business school professor of mine once referenced “buying a car from a dealership” as one of Americans’ top ten fears. And while the nation’s anxieties have evolved since my MBA years, shopping for a vehicle remains a significant pain for many consumers today.¹

The automotive industry has long had an unfortunate reputation in the collective unconscious, what with:

Pushy sales tactics
A lack of transparency
Hidden costs
Add-ons that don’t add up

And even if you’re not swayed by pop culture stereotypes of car dealers, the amount of confusing information that gets thrown at you when shopping for a vehicle is overwhelming at the best of times.

Like many parents, I spend a significant amount of time driving my kids from one after-school activity to another. But while I may be a veteran carpooler, a Formula 1 driver I am not.

The Digital Playbook for Automotive Brands

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I’m not particularly interested in acceleration stats, high-fangled engine specs or rustproofing. Nor do I want to spend forever negotiating on special features I don’t need or get into lengthy discussions about warranties.

When it comes to picking out a car, my checklist is fairly simple: I’m looking for good mileage, reliable safety ratings and comfort on the road.

My main priorities: An easy buying experience and simple, fast delivery

So when it was finally time for me to get a new car, I decided to go online in order to bypass those long, confusing showroom conversations I’ve grown to dread. I made a short list of my top three car manufacturers and checked out each of their sites. My main priorities: an easy buying experience and simple, fast delivery.

In the end, my online experience was far from seamless, and I had to request assistance from a customer service representative. I did end up buying a vehicle online, but the process was complex enough that it did make me wonder, “Do car manufacturers actually design their sites with the intention of selling online..?”

Or is it high time that the automotive industry embraced conversion rate optimization?

The digital shift in the automotive industry

While buying a car online might seem daunting to a lot of people, more and more big purchases and transactions are shifting to the digital sphere. There is a tremendous opportunity for the automotive industry to build up its digital audience by investing in successful online experiences that remove the friction associated with showroom visits. But creating successful journeys online means more than transposing the dealership sales model to digital platforms.

Creating successful journeys online means more than transposing the dealership model to digital platforms.

Disruptors like Airbnb and Amazon have understood that today’s consumers want seamless digital experiences that strike the right balance of giving you the facts upfront and at the same time not overloading you with information.

A brand like Tesla (I did not buy a Tesla) delivers on these points, keeping the process of buying a vehicle as simple and transparent as possible, with a manageable amount of choice for the consumer. Their car configurator is user-friendly, pre-selecting standard models and clearly labelling the value of each added feature for a quick and painless overview of upgrades.

The digital experience can drive the conversion rate automotive industry wants

Understanding what consumers are looking for in a digital experience is the first step towards creating journeys that speak to their expectations and are convenient from start to finish. This becomes particularly important when it comes to major transactions like acquiring a vehicle, which is slightly more involved than many of the “one-click purchases” we complete from day to day.

Developing these seamless journeys means knowing which steps and elements cause users to stall or hesitate, or become frustrated. Thanks to AI, analytics today can pinpoint where these obstacles lie so you can focus on fixing the User Experience (UX) elements that still make consumers reluctant to convert online when it comes to cars.

Automotive brands that harness digital experience analytics to understand site visitor behavior and optimize conversion rates will turn their digital platforms into the ideal showroom, keeping up with the digital appetite of today’s consumers and shift more and more of their vehicle sales to the online space.

Just take a look at French car dealership BYmyCAR, who used Contentsquare to optimize its customer journey, increase inbound leads and exceed its goal of doubling its conversion rate.

To find out more about how the automotive industry can drive better conversion rates through digital experiences and overcome the digital challenges facing the industry, read our automotive playbook.

The Digital Playbook for Automotive Brands

Download now to discover the biggest digital challenges facing automotive brands and how to overcome them.

Get my free copy

1. How Not To Buy A Car: What I Learned From My Failed Negotiation

The post To drive a higher conversion rate automotive industry needs to focus on digital experiences appeared first on Contentsquare.

Digital Transformation for the Automotive Industry

Brillixa Herdhiana — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

In 2010, Ford announced that it would start selling its cars online. According to their research at the time, 4 in 10 buyers were ready to buy their next car on the internet.

Seven years later, most automotive manufacturers and dealers are still far from being ready to sell cars online, not to mention consumer expectations which are at an all time high. Yet despite massive investments in digital technology by all the players, there is still little to no understanding of exactly what customers are looking for online.

In our new study dedicated to car manufacturer’s e-commerce, we set out to solve the automotive industry’s online challenges by driving transformation in user experience. A great digital experience will convert more visitors online and help sales managers build lasting relations with customers, both online and offline.

OVER THE LAST SIX MONTHS, INTERNET TRAFFIC FOR NEW CAR TECHNOLOGIES HAS SHOT UP BY 127%!

Today, most customers start their car-buying journey online by researching new car technologies. In fact, over the last six months, internet traffic for new car technologies has shot up by 127%. Yet despite this increase in traffic, only 1% of visitors will actually fill in a form or leave contact details. So why are 99% of online visitors not satisfied enough to leave their details? Classic analytics don’t give you any information on why visitors do what they do. You need the behavioral data, or visitor’s interactions, in order to start making decisions that will move your customer down the sales path.

By uncovering the customer’s journey online, you can begin to understand what they are doing, and how you can help move them down the sales cycle, and bring them closer to your online objectives. These interactions will let you know how the buyer feels on your website, or what the actual user experience is. Hesitation metrics can signal frustration, and waiting a long time before the first click can mean confusion.

OUR STUDY SHOWS THAT 65% OF TRAFFIC IS STILL FROM DESKTOPS.

Our study shows that 65% of traffic is still from desktops. You can imagine a visitor comfortably seated at the computer and wanting to have a look at some new car models. What would make navigation easy for them? Since most visitors know exactly what they are looking for, try playing with the navigation to focus on showcasing vehicles and their features, making it easy for them to progress from the home page to product pages, until they reach the contact form.

A picture, of course, is worth a thousand words. Here too, you can use the power of images to create a good user experience and increase the likelihood of submitting a form by a sizable 134%. On the other hand, be wary of too much scrolling. Your visitors are looking for very specific information, and they will not scroll through the entire page to track it down. If your bounce rates are high, look at the scroll rate and adjust the location of information on the page. If they do find what they are looking for, that is good news for the site. Our study showed that after the 30th page read, the likelihood of visiting the store locator increases by 35%.

While new car sales still happen mainly in the showroom, there is a clear indication that most people are starting their buying journeys online with research and information gathering. The experience you give your customer on the first page visit will set the stage for the entire customer relationship. Make sure it is a positive one by optimizing your website with a great user experience.

Read the complete study here.

The post Digital Transformation for the Automotive Industry appeared first on Contentsquare.