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• “Growth at all costs” is outdated.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.

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.

So, we sat down with their Head of Online Trading and Optimization, Sreena Jamieson to get the latest on her customer-first approach to the online experience at M&S, how they’re using Contentsquare’s digital experience analytics platform and the impact it’s had on the business.

About M&S and Sreena

Leading British retailer, M&S is known for bringing quality, great value food, clothing and homeware to millions of customers around the world. Founded in 1884, M&S now has more than 1,509 stores and over 100 websites globally.

Sreena Jamieson heads up their Online Trading and Optimization team at marksandspencer.com. She’s been at M&S for around three years and looks after optimization across the entire site, as well as trading for their Clothing and Home products.

Before M&S, Sreena spent six years working at Tesco and ten years at electrical retailer, Comet. Throughout her career, Sreena has done a number of online and marketing roles but has always worked in retail because she “loves the fast-paced environment and putting the customer at the heart of everything”.

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What are some of your key challenges and priorities?

Sreena gives us her three top priorities as Head of Online Trading and Optimization at M&S:

1. Putting the customer at the heart of everything and “basing all our decisions around this,” says Sreena. “Of course, my role is also commercially focused, but it’s always looking at it through a customer lens.”
2. Growing customer lifetime value. “We’re not just looking to hit sales, we’re also focused on the longer-term value that we’re getting from each and every one of our customers,” explains Sreena.
3. Establishing M&S as a credible style-led fashion retailer. Sreena says, “My goal is to ensure we have a healthy balance between hitting our commercial aspirations whilst inspiring our customers on the site.”

From a challenge perspective, she says it’s a mesh between “battling decision-making based on opinions rather than customer data” and “trying to understand and respond to changes in customer mindset”. In particular, Sreena highlights how drastically customer behavior has changed: “The past couple of years have been very interesting because customers have become unpredictable, and their behavior has been unprecedented. Up until that point, retail had been realtively cyclical and predictable,” shares Sreena.

Like many retailers, M&S is also faced with constant fluctuation in trade performance. “All retailers have weeks when they do well and when they don’t do so well. Part of my team’s role is to respond to that in a quick and agile way.”

How is Contentsquare helping optimize the M&S digital experience?

Contentsquare has helped M&S “put the customer at the heart of the website”, says Sreena.  “It allows us to be completely data-led and make evidence-based decisions. And also dispel some of those individual opinions that are out there.”

Another thing that Contentsquare has enabled M&S to do is “answer the why’s that we can’t answer through our other analytical tools,” says Sreena. “It’s easy to get the `whats´  because we’ve got data coming out of our ears. What Contentsquare does is help us get a deeper level of insight into the `whys´, which is invaluable.”

“Contentsquare gives us additional data, helping us find new insights that we’ve never ever had before. We can identify where customer pain points may be and also what customers are engaging with on the site. Features like Session Replays, help us see how different customer groups use our site, which is incredibly insightful.” – Sreena Jamieson, Head of Online Trading & Optimization at M&S

As a trading team, how exactly are you using Contentsquare?

“We use Zoning Analysis on our home page and landing pages to see how they’re performing, what tiles and modules are receiving the most interaction or visits. It also helps us to prioritize page optimizations,” says Sreena. Contentsquare is an important part of the team’s day-to-day work, enabling them “plan landing pages in a more detailed way by attaching visual insights to the landing page planners”.

Using Contentsquare’s Customer Journey Analysis, the Trading team is also able to see their customer journeys in detail and identify key pain points — where customers struggle or drop off. “We can see where visitors exit and from which page all within Journey Analysis. And what’s great about it is, that it helps to visualize our onsite journeys as well,” says Sreena.

“Customer Journey Analysis provides a visual representation of what our customers are doing. It’s great when presenting the data to our Commercial teams. Dropping in a table can be boring and flat, so sharing insights in Contentsquare brings the data to life.” – Sreena Jamieson, Head of Online Trading & Optimization at Marks And Spencer

Do you have a favorite Contentsquare feature?

“CS live,” says Sreena “It’s just so intuitive”. CS Live overlays data directly on the site without users needing to leave their browser, allowing for quick access to insights and making it easy for Sreena and her team to present insights in meetings with senior management. “CS Live is probably one of the things that makes me most excited about Contentsquare. It’s easy to use, visual and you get insights instantaneously.”

“I also really love the Customer Journey Analysis module, which is hard to do with other analytics tools. In Contentsquare, it’s a ready-made visual of your journey. I can just take a snapshot and walk into a presentation and help other stakeholders understand what’s happening in particular customer journeys,” shares Sreena.

Who else has their hands on Contentsquare at M&S?

Contentsquare is being used across digital teams at M&S. “What’s really great about the platform is that it can be used by such a wide range of teams,” says Sreena. Multiple teams at M&S have their hands on the tool using it in various ways:

• The Product teams use it when they’re designing new features,
• The Website Optimization, Content and Imagery teams use it to analyze product details pages,
• The UX teams use it when designing new customer journeys
• The analytics team uses it to do in-depth analyses to support multiple stakeholders across the business

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What kind of an impact has this had on the business?

Having a shared platform has helped unite digital teams bringing a “level of consistency of data being shown across the business,“ shares Sreena. “It means when we’re presenting to our leadership team, we are all referring to the same data. We’re able to easily show different stakeholders that we shouldn’t be making decisions just based on what we think, but according to data insights,” explains Sreena.

In particular, CS Live has helped the team “combat opinion-based decision making by getting the right data in front of key senior stakeholders in a visual way,” says Sreena.

“Contentsquare has empowered us to be truly data-led without it being a huge analysis exercise. I can pull up the website and press CS Live to see what customers are interacting and within seconds I’ve got the data needed and it’s also impossible to argue against.”

Lastly, how was your onboarding experience with Contentsquare?

“It was great,” confirms Sreena. “We were very heavily supported by Contentsquare. We had lots of bespoke training sessions and face-to-face fortnightly sessions where we shared best practices. The team at Contentsquare also gave us lots of useful insight and examples from other retailers to help us kickstart how we could use specific tools.”

Sreena also shares her appreciation for “the level of transparency” in our partnership. “Initially, when we started, we felt the adoption was a little bit slower than expected. So, what our Customer Success Managers, Louise and Camille, did was share our adoption rates and compared us against competitors to show how we were fairing. I really appreciated that candor, so we could do something about it.”

“What’s stuck with me about Contentsquare is that you get much more than just a  platform to use. It’s a strategic relationship. Our Contentsquare Customer Success Managers, Louise and Camille want to understand what our strategic priorities are and how they can help us deliver our objectives.“ – Sreena Jamieson, Head of Online Trading & Digital Marketing at Marks And Spencer

Get insights into your digital customer behavior with Contentsquare

Want to know how Contentsquare’s visual analytics platform can help you optimize your customer experience? Book a demo to find out how you can put customers at the heart of your digital experience strategy with data-led insights. Get your demo.

The post How Contentsquare is helping M&S put the customer at the heart of the site experience appeared first on Contentsquare.

New York, NY – May 2, 2022 – Salomon is using digital experience analytics leader Contentsquare to monitor all of its collections, measure key metrics such as engagement and conversion rate across all website pages, understand the performance of campaigns in order to prioritize AB tests, test and analyze in depth the performance of each optimization, detect points of friction along the customer journey, and prioritize ecommerce improvements.

For Salomon, the goal is to deliver as seamless and flawless a customer experience as possible.

“Salomon is one of the only brands to offer such a huge variety of products. Even with such an expansive product catalog, the user should be able to navigate easily. We’re pleased to provide Salomon with the ability to offer each of their customers the best online experience possible while helping the brand maintain their reputation as a sports equipment specialist,” said Philippe Omer-Decugis, Director of Contentsquare, France.

Marta Sitkowska, Global eCommerce Merchandising Manager, Salomon, said “At Salomon, we have placed digital transformation and delivering a better online consumer experience at the heart of our growth strategy. As a leading global outdoor brand, we need to personalize the user experience because different countries have different purchasing habits, and this is where Contentsquare really helps us. We’ve been using Contentsquare for three years to track engagement differences by country and build more personalized and localized content experiences. For example, we know that we can push cross-country skiing in Finland in December, but not in Spain, where we’ll promote hiking products instead.”

Sitkowska continued, “Internally, Contentsquare allows us to be very visual in our analyses. It makes our data much easier to communicate with our teams—especially with snapshots and dashboards—so that even internal teams who are not necessarily familiar with data can digest it. The data also helps us quickly align on our next steps as a team to meet customer expectations.”

With 700 employees at its world headquarters in Annecy, French Alps, Salomon is sold across the world — including all across Europe, North America, Japan and China. The majority of their collections are launched online.

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 850 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. Founded in Paris and with offices around the world, Contentsquare has raised $810m in investment funding from leading investors, including Softbank, BlackRock and others. For more information, visit www.contentsquare.com

About Salomon

Born in the French Alps in 1947, Salomon is committed to pushing the boundaries of mountain sports through the creation of innovative equipment that allows people to play, progress and challenge themselves in their chosen outdoor sports. The company produces and sells premium footwear, winter sports and mountaineering equipment, hiking equipment, and apparel specifically designed for all those disciplines. Products are developed in the company’s Annecy Design Center, where engineers, designers and athletes collaborate to create innovative solutions that continually improve the outdoor experiences of those who see nature as a vast playground.

Media Contact

Gaetane Roche

Gaetane.Roche@Contentsquare.com

The post Salomon Relies on Contentsquare to Optimize the Digital Customer Experience appeared first on Contentsquare.

About Moss Bros

Moss Bros is the UK’s number one men’s formalwear retailer. Their mission? To inspire, guide, and help men feel amazing whatever the occasion. “And we’ve been around for a very long time,” says Matt, “Since 1851!”

During that time, Moss Bros has adapted and expanded its services in line with changing consumer demands. In 2022, there are now four parts to Moss Bros’ business.

“Firstly, there’s our ready-to-wear menswear across both formal and casual wear ranges,” explains Matt. “Then we’ve got our custom-made tailoring service called Tailor Me which allows customers to choose from 1000s of different styling options, fabrics, linings, and buttons to craft their own design.”

On top of this, Moss Bros’ most famous offering is their hire service. “That’s what a lot of people know us for,” says Matt. “This offering is very occasion-led, so people hiring for weddings and black tie events—that kind of thing.”

And finally, their latest venture: Moss Box, a subscription-based business launched in 2021. “Subscribers can have any two items from a Moss Box collection at any time, swapping them as many times as they like. We take care of delivery and cleaning. And if you love something, you can keep it!” he explains.

Preparing their website for success

With seven years’ experience at Moss Bros, plus previous roles including Head of eCommerce at luxury fashion retailer my-wardrobe.com and Marketing Director at parts retailer eSpares, Matt has a wealth of eCommerce knowledge at his disposable.

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So how does Matt’s team prepare for success throughout the year?

For Matt, understanding his customer’s digital behavior on the deepest level, then implementing changes to make their lives easier is the name of the game. “We just love coming up with better ways of doing things.”

“We’re an optimization-focused team at Moss Bros. We love getting under the skin of our visitors and analyzing what they’re doing on-site. We take pride in uncovering their pain points and finding the areas of friction that are stopping them from doing what they want to do.”

For this, Matt and his team use Contentsquare’s advanced intelligence platform to analyze their customer behavior, diving into individual page performance and in-depth customer journey analysis to better understand what their customers are doing. They also feed testing and personalization data from Dynamic Yield into the Contentsquare platform to see how different A/B tests are performing. “We then use all of this data to help craft better experiences for them,” he says.

Alongside Contentsquare and Dynamic Yield, Moss Bros works closely with Endless Gain; a research agency that uses biometrics, psychology, and experimentation to optimize customer experiences and improve conversion rates. “They help us run testing sessions where we get remote volunteers to try various tasks on-site,” Matt explains. “We watch how they perform the tasks and ask them to explain any difficulties they’re having as they go.”

This mix of qualitative and quantitative data helps Moss Bros paint a thorough picture of their customer behavior. And armed with these insights, they’re able to continuously adapt and improve their site to better cater to their users’ preferences. 

Want to learn more about data-driven approach to design?  

Download our latest Retailers on Retail Report to read the full article and gain access to actionable advice from 12 other retail experts, too! 

From insights on how to leverage digital customer experience data to future-proof online journeys to tips on using empathy-driven design to improve site experience, this report is packed with real-life learnings and use cases to help you have a successful year in retail.

The post Data-driven web design: The recipe for success according to Moss Bros appeared first on Contentsquare.

Alongside Charlotte is Laura Rademaker; a Customer Experience Manager who manages both product owners and UX specialists within the Digital Operations team. “I’m in charge of ensuring the customer has the best possible experience on our site and becomes a loyal returning customer.”

About G-Star

G-star is a luxury fashion brand dedicated to the cloth, craft, culture, and history of denim. “We want to be the most hardcore denim brand,” says Laura. “Denim is in our blood. It’s what we live and breathe.” 

This means every digital interaction a customer has with their brand needs to demonstrate their essence and these values. But not just that: “We want to exceed their expectations, so every time they visit us they come back thinking the experience was the most on-brand and amazing experience they’ve ever had,” says Laura.

Each customer needs to feel as though the content they received was relevant to them and fitted their needs. “We believe in being fierce, authentic, and outspoken—so we should show this to our customers,” says Laura. But, as a brand, how do you know if you’re actually achieving this? 

Taking it back to basics

The team at G-star wanted to measure how their customer experience was performing in light of their brand goals. However, like many digital teams, they weren’t sure where to begin. “You have heaps of data everywhere and can feel unorganized and chaotic. You’re not sure where to find the information you need to make the right product decisions,” says Laura. 

So the team decided to start by learning what the different levels of customer experience involved before working out how to accurately track their progress against each level. 

Here’s what they found…

The different levels of CX

Interaction. “Firstly, there’s the interaction level: the specific touchpoint a customer has with your product,” explains Laura. “Things that affect the interaction level are the information architecture of your site, for example. Or your visual design, which also includes the quality of your product.”

Customer journey. Each interaction happens at a specific point in time, so the next level of customer experience is an in-depth understanding of your customer journey. “We need to anticipate customer needs, understand where they’ve been and where they’re trying to go,” she continues. It’s all about giving your customers a consistent experience so they build confidence with the brand. 

Relationship. Beyond the customer journey is the relationship you have with your customers. “It’s the sum of all interactions and journeys and is ultimately how your customers feel about your brand,” says Laura. 

“Things that impact the relationship stage can be the experience they have with your product, whether it’s a digital product or a physical one. It’s any touchpoint they have along the customer journey, from speaking to customer services to purchasing something. And it’s also your branding.” 

Do you live and breathe your brand values, and is this evident in all of your interactions and journeys? Is your marketing team delivering content that accurately reflects the experience your product actually offers? All of these things help to build a relationship with your customer, and they’re imperatively important.

Armed with this understanding of customer experience levels, it was time for the team to start tracking their progress. But how can you measure if your brand is delivering the customer experience you think it is? What metrics do you need to measure? And are your typical analytics tools enough?

A framework for success

To analyze their customer experience, the team turned to Google’s HEART Framework for a holistic view of their data points. Here’s what the framework looks like: 

• H is for happiness: How do customers feel about your product? This is measured through metrics such as satisfaction surveys, ratings, reviews, or NPS scores.
• E is for engagement: How often do customers return to your brand? This is measured through metrics such as visits, session length, and pages viewed.
• A is for adoption: Do customers become new users or converters? This is measured through metrics such as the conversion rate of new versus returning users and account signups. 
• R is for retention: Do customers like our product enough to buy it again? This is measured through metrics such as churn rate, repeat purchases, and app usage. 
• T is for test success: Can users achieve their goal quickly and easily? This is measured through metrics such as time on specific tasks (i.e. the time to complete a checkout flow), surveys with goal completion rates, and customer effort score to understand if there are bottlenecks.

Want to learn more about how G-Star’s using the Google HEART framework?

Download our latest Retailers on Retail Report to read the full article and gain access to actionable advice from 12 other retail experts, too! 

From insights on how to leverage digital customer experience data to future-proof online journeys to tips on using empathy-driven design to improve site experience, this report is packed with real-life learnings and use cases to help you have a successful year in retail. 

Download our Retailers on Retail Report

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The post How to use the Google HEART framework to optimize your CX with G-Star appeared first on Contentsquare.

Helen joined Sweaty Betty in March this year and her main focus since then has been driving growth for the brand. “We’ve been on a huge rollercoaster recently, particularly with the pandemic,” she says, “But it’s been a really exciting time of international growth for us.”

Sweaty Betty is an activewear brand that empowers women through fitness and beyond. “We do this with our fantastic technical products and onsite content and campaigns,” explains Helen. “We also have the Sweaty Betty Foundation which empowers women and girls from every background to get active, and stay active, for life.” 

And while they’ve seen huge growth over the last few years, their plans for the future are even bigger. “Our five-year vision is to build a $1 billion brand by growing our global community,” Helen continues. And building that global community of loyal customers has been an incredibly important part of Sweaty Betty’s journey up until now. 

One thing we’ve done well is built strong, loyal, and resilient customers in the UK by offering a fantastic retail experience full of amazing staff who help our customers find the right products for them.

Their friendly and customer-focused in-store buying experience is something that’s set them apart from the rest and kept UK shoppers coming back for more.

But creating a similar experience online? “That’s a really big goal for us which we’re gearing up to tackle,” says Helen. 

A period of positive digital growth

Over the last few years, Sweaty Betty has seen a 67% increase in digital growth, “which is phenomenal for us,” says Helen. “We opened our first store back in 1998, so we’ve been around a while—but that huge growth recently is really exciting to see.”

With their US segment up a staggering 60% year on year, the team at Sweaty Betty puts their success down to an integrated marketing strategy. “These positive numbers are primarily a result of a digital and wholesale mix,” explains Helen.

“We’re starting to see a real shift in terms of our market share. The UK has had the largest share for a long time as you’d expect, but we’re seeing a strong move of the needle towards international markets now: around 25% of total sales.”

As Sweaty Betty continues its expansion in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, China, Germany, and more, it’s imperative for them to understand the different nuances of various markets. Buyers shop differently in different parts of the world, so catering specifically to the preferred customer journey in new markets is a key for success.

“Without tools like Contentsquare we’d be running blind,” Helen says. “We do a lot of qualitative and quantitative user research, so we’re starting to understand more and more about our customers. But by overlaying that with behavioral analytics tools like Contentsquare, we can see exactly what’s working, what’s not working, and what opportunities and gaps there. So it’s really exciting for us!” 

Getting personal

“Historically, we’ve had a broad-brush approach to our sites and the content and campaigns that we run,” admits Helen. “But we know that needs to change.” 

By analyzing data from new markets, the team at Sweaty Betty can see huge differences in customer behavior across markets already. For example, they’ve found bounce rates in the US and Ireland are higher than in the UK, and conversion rates in the US are much lower.

Unable to rely as heavily on word of mouth as in the UK, these discrepancies with buying behavior are unsurprising—and demonstrate a common issue for brands when expanding into new markets. 

So what tactics did Sweaty Betty employ to try and improve their metrics in the US?

Halle Berry: The perfect campaign to test

Sweaty Betty’s campaign with Halle Berry earlier this year was a prime opportunity for digital testing. “Our main objective was to build brand awareness [in the US]. And with such high volumes of traffic, we could start to explore and experiment with our content,” explains Helen.

So instead of sending customers to the product landing page (PLP) directly, the team tested sending US-based users on an “exploratory journey” of Sweaty Betty first. “We wanted to help new US customers understand not only why they should pick our products, but also who we are as a brand and what we stand for,” Helen says. 

“It was a risk because we sent a lot of our traffic through creative landing pages rather than into our previously highest converting pages such as the PLP.” But with less brand recognition in the states and the need to educate customers on Sweaty Betty’s values and benefits, the team thought it was a tactic worth testing—especially now they could closely analyze results with Contentsquare. 

And it turned out to be a risk worth taking.

Removing the guesswork with Contentsquare

“It turns out the pages that included storytelling and video content [such as creative landing pages and video blogs] contributed towards an 8% increase in our US conversion rates, qualifying our hypothesis that video and storytelling content resonates for our US customers,” says Helen.

Using Contentsquare’s in-depth engagement analytics, the team could see exactly how consumers were interacting with their new landing pages. Also, by analyzing the scroll depth of their US audience, they realized early on that some of the pages were too long, with the creative often outbalancing the key CTAs.

“Our US users don’t have the same scroll depth as other markets,” says Helen. “So thanks to Contentsquare, we could make data-driven decisions about where we placed our CTAs and creative. And we saw a big difference in user behavior since making those tweaks—almost immediately.”

As well as moving converting content higher up the page, the team included more user-generated content (UGC) having noticed a +23% conversion rate on pages containing customer photos, through Contentsquare’s Zoning Analysis.

“It was a great opportunity to build brand awareness and drive traffic. We were able to take some of these asset-based tactics and start to explore how we could positively affect behavior for our US customer base.

The team then took the customer insights gleaned from Contentsquare to optimize their second Halle Berry launch. “On the landing page, for example, we’re going to cut the overall content down but move the video content up and prioritize it in the journey”. Why? Because Contentsquare has shown them that this is what works for their US audience. 

Testing gamification

Sweaty Betty’s second most successful campaign this year was Insider Week. “Every day, we drove customers to a landing page to see how they reacted to a different offer. We focused on gamification, such as a Wheel of Fortune, which we found resonated with our US customers,” says Helen. “We used Contentsquare every day to understand customer behavior and tweak our tactics accordingly.” 

Also part of Insider Week was an offers page full of Sweaty Betty’s partnerships. “Again, Contentsquare’s Zoning feature helped us understand what worked and what didn’t work,” explains Helen. They found their US customers were most attracted to their partners’ beauty offers—but these content assets were much further down the offer page. 

“Exposure rate [on these offers] was pretty low”, says Helen. The learning? To better engage their US audience during Insider Week, they should move their beauty offers higher up their pages to increase conversion rates. 

Without Contentsquare, the team would be unable to see the conversation rates of individual assets on the landing page, and any optimizations would have largely been trial and error and guesswork.

Content and behavior

As Helen mentioned before, converting their US customers remains a sticking point for Sweaty Beaty. “Our bounce rate and exit rate on the homepage is nearly double for our US audience. And we believe that’s down to relevant content and brand awareness,” says Helen. 

The team knows their US customer base is more driven by promotions than other markets—a tactic they’ve seen great success with already. So the team’s newest challenge is balancing the scales. How can they create less reliance on discounts and promotions, yet continue to drive revenue? 

The answer is an in-depth understanding of their US customers and a dedicated effort to optimize their website in line with their findings. 

“We’ve found that US customers are much less interested in sustainability than UK and APAC markets, which is interesting. Typically, we push our sustainable products quite a lot, but with this new insight we can tweak our content so it’s relevant to US markets,” says Helen. 

The same goes for using a variety of models. “Our US customers have reacted well to different size models and more inclusive campaigns” so this is something Sweaty Betty will continue to push in the states.

Contentsquare helped us qualify our hypothesis that we need to show different body types, different heights, and different ages on our site. Because we’re all about empowering every single woman—and the feedback from our US audience on this content has been amazing.

So, what’s next for Sweaty Betty?

“There’ll be no surprise here,” says Helen. “Our main focus as we move into peak season is on personalization and regionalization. For example, if I like yoga and I’m five foot four, then what leggings are going to help me on that journey?” explains Helen. For Sweaty Betty, it’s all about giving the customer a journey that’s tailored perfectly for them. The perfect fit.

Get in touch

If you’re interested to find out how Contentsquare’s digital intelligence platform can help you understand and optimize towards different markets, then get in touch with us today. We’d be delighted to show you how we’re helping retail clients just like you deliver experiences their customers can’t help but love. 

The post The perfect fit: How Sweaty Betty is enticing US customers with the help of Contentsquare appeared first on Contentsquare.

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.

1. Show only a few reviews at a time

You should provide your users with helpful information at a glance but, at the same time, you don’t want to overwhelm them. Therefore, display a minimum of 6 reviews by default, but show no more than 15 reviews by default for desktop. For mobile, show no more than 10 reviews by default.

Implement a CTA that allows users to load more or see all reviews. This ensures that users are not endlessly scrolling down the page, and also ensures that the user can still reach any content below the review section at ease.

On Target’s mobile site, The user sees 8 reviews in the section when they first scroll to it, and can click on the load CTA to load 8 more reviews.

On Sephora, six reviews are shown on the page by default. Too few reviews may require too much effort from users, having them click on the button to load more, while too many reviews can overwhelm the user.

2. Provide only relevant details about reviewers

Avoid asking and displaying unnecessary information; only provide details of the reviewer that are most needed and relevant. Also, show this information in a digestible format that is easy to skim.

Relevant information about the reviewer, such as eye color, hair color, and skin type, is listed on the right-hand side of Sephora’s review listing.

3. Product reviews: include additional features to increase reliability

Reliability is key for a good review section. Indicate which reviews come from verified purchases to further inform the readers that these reviews are trustworthy. Clearly label on the review that it is a ‘verified purchase’ or from a ‘verified buyer,’ and make the label easily identifiable with a distinct color or a checkmark.

Additionally, implement a system that can allow users to vote reviews as ‘helpful’ or ‘not helpful.’ Allow users to see the total number of ‘helpful’ and ‘unhelpful’ votes. With this, users can then see which reviews have helped other users, and decide on which reviews to trust.

Sephora informs the user of a verified purchase by writing a green “Verified Purchase” label with the review. Users can also vote the helpfulness of a review by clicking on the up and down arrows. The total counts for each upvote and downvote are shown in parentheses next to each arrow.

4. Explore different formats and layouts

There are different formats and layouts outside of vertical lists you can explore when implementing a reviews section. Consider using a popover to display reviews. This avoids extending the height of the page, and allows the user to easily exit when they are done.

Displaying reviews in a horizontal format also works very well. Allow users to view these in a carousel or navigate through them page-by-page. This conserves space on the page, and avoids having users scroll through. Again, make sure to show only a few reviews at a time. Use a ‘load more’ button or ‘see all reviews’ buttons below this section to see more reviews. 

Everlane shows their reviews in a horizontal format, which conserves space on the page. Although it does show fewer than 6 reviews at a time, clicking on the carousel arrow shows an entirely new set of reviews rather than showing them one-by-one. When clicking on the ‘View All Reviews’ button, the user can view a popover to scroll through more reviews

5. Respond to negative product reviews

If you get any negative reviews, don’t ignore them, but write a response to ensure that other users understand you care about any problems with a product. Make sure to address the specific problem at hand, communicate the actionable steps that will be taken with the provided feedback, and contact the reviewer or leave contact information.

More than half of consumers expect businesses to reply to negative reviews within a week (ReviewTrackers, 2018). It is important to respond to any negative reviews to avoid having it affect the way other readers will view the product and even the business itself.

The Summer Fridays team has left a response to the one-star review by addressing the specific problem, communicating what’s been done with the feedback, and the steps they will take afterwards.

6. Include a section for Q&A

By including a Q&A section you ensure that users can easily find answers to any questions they may have or ask their own. Consider also having a quick link for this next to the star ratings at the top of the page so that users can navigate to this section quickly.

The brand has a tab for Q&A, where users can read and also answer any questions. This section only shows two questions by default, and has two CTAs at the bottom to view all questions and also ask a question.

Conclusion

In summary, reviews are a huge driving factor in a consumer’s purchasing decisions. Make sure to show only a few product reviews at a time, provide only reviewer information that is absolutely necessary, include additional information in reviews to increase credibility, respond to negative reviews, and also have a Q&A section.

The post Product reviews: 6 tips on creating the best review section for your product page appeared first on Contentsquare.

About Laura and her team

Laura is responsible for eCommerce buying and planning, as well as merchandising and trading those products on the Scotch & Soda website.

“Our key challenge is to find the right assortment for the right audience. We need insight into what our customers are engaging with and looking for when they come to our website. We want our users to find the product they are looking for, in the best way possible.”

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

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What was life like before Contentsquare?

Laura paints us a picture: “We had massive difficulties accessing data fast enough and in a visual way. We had Google Analytics, so the data was there, but we didn’t have the time and resources to have it displayed in a fast and visual way. For instance, we were spending hours finding out how many clicks there were on a certain element.”

It was so time consuming, we had no data analytics team, everyone was working on their own data. So it was a priority to find a tool where everyone gets access to data. A platform that works across all teams and levels.

“From a communication standpoint, visual data is meaningful.”

In her role, Laura has to present data back to senior stakeholders within the eCommerce team. But when Google Analytics hands you a table of numbers, it’s just not engaging or visual enough.

“We’re already using the CS Live Chrome Extension to quickly show live data in trade meetings and to senior stakeholders in other teams. In seconds, we have data showing engagement with the navigation, categories, genders, and countries.

It would have taken us ages to access something like this before. It’s a good example of super quick, visual, meaningful data.”

Why did Contentsquare stand out to you?

“For me, it was really how complete the platform is. We had other tools that would do one or a few things, like heat mapping. Our heat mapping tool worked great for our content team, but it didn’t allow my team to measure navigation engagement, for instance, as they were not static elements. So our single solution tools weren’t enough.”

Contentsquare has all the capabilities we need, not only for content, but site merchandising, UX, performance marketing, and eCommerce teams. I’ve never seen a tool that supports all teams so well.

“I also love how customizable it is, to a level where it fits and suits different roles’ needs. For example, I could have a mapping for gender in the upper funnel, whereas a UX manager could have a mapping for the checkout.”

What insights has Contentsquare revealed so far?

“Interestingly, the data has confirmed one of my biggest gut feelings. In our NL market, the trade insight and sales numbers show that we make more sales for menswear. But I had a gut feeling we have a large audience who are interested in womenswear but don’t convert.

Using Contentsquare, we could see that our users engage mostly with womenswear (although we’re not assuming they are women users!).

If we’d only looked at sales numbers, we’d have missed a huge opportunity to convert those browsers interested in womenswear. Contentsquare confirms our hypotheses so quickly – the access to fast data is invaluable.”

And lastly, the golden question: If you were recommending CS to a friend, what would you say?

If you’re struggling with access to quick data and the visualization of data, Contentsquare is the one tool I’ve found to be the one-stop solution.

I’ve worked at brands like Nike before and even when they have an analytics team in place (plus tools like Tableau and Adobe Analytics) they’ve still implemented Contentsquare. I mean, this goes to show there is an added value in Contentsquare – even with all the resources and maturity of an established brand. 

A little word from us at Contentsquare

“Amsterdam-based Scotch & Soda started in 1985 and rapidly became known for their progressive style and unexpected details. I’ve shopped in their stores myself (a proud owner of a winter jacket that I wore for many years!) and I’ll never forget the combination of great denim-styled shop personnel and a very pleasant fragrance in the store. Scotch & Soda has a strong omnichannel strategy and with online becoming more and more significant, it’s essential to have an impeccable digital experience to create loyal customers. We are teaming up with the bright minds at Scotch & Soda and by investing in digital experience analytics, they can call themselves among the first adopters in the Netherlands.”

— Tjeerd van der Putten, Director Netherlands, Contentsquare

About Contentsquare

We’re on a mission to give every digital team the ability to measure how their actions affect the user experience on their website, mobile sites, and apps. Not just the analysts. Not just some of the time. Not just some of the data.

Our platform tracks billions of digital interactions and turns these behaviors into intelligent recommendations everyone can use to improve digital experiences, grow revenue, and fuel innovation.

About Scotch & Soda

Born in Amsterdam, Scotch & Soda celebrates the free spirit of its birth city. Endlessly optimistic, the brand champions individuality, authenticity, and the power of self-expression to create the unique – an attitude reflected in its designs. The Scotch & Soda collections include menswear, womenswear, kidswear, denim, eyewear, fragrances, and accessories, occupying a unique space in today’s global fashion landscape.

Collections can be found globally in 229 freestanding stores across Europe, North America, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Australia, as well as in 7.000 doors in some of the world’s biggest cities, including New York, London, and Paris. The brand’s online operations also ship to over 70 countries.

For more information, please visit scotch-soda.com

The post Dress for success: Scotch & Soda partner with Contentsquare appeared first on Contentsquare.