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• “Growth at all costs” is outdated.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.

No wonder digital professionals believe that data-driven insights will be a top trend in the customer experience (CX) space for 2024. According to our What’s Next in CX: 2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends report, more digital experiences will be powered by data-driven insights provided by analytics platforms.

It’s safe to say decision-making based on gut feeling is a thing of the past.

As a player in digital experience analytics, this is music to our ears! Naturally, we had to dig a little deeper to see what trends are set to dominate the market next year.

So, here are our top five digital analytics trends with insights from experts at leading brands such as Zoom, Snaplogic and Snowflake.

1. Artificial intelligence (AI)

No surprises here!

Thanks to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, AI is more accessible than ever. Both tools have been instrumental in helping people understand the value of AI and adopting it into their daily lives.

Today, almost half (48%) of business professionals already use data analysis, machine learning and AI to address data quality issues. Having seen just how powerful it is, they’re likely to continue investing in AI-powered analytics.

But it’s not just about automation or fixing data quality issues; AI accelerates the time to insights and allows for data analysis at scale.

Analyzing data across devices, pages and the user journey is extremely difficult to do manually. AI-powered analytics automates this by predicting user intent and making recommendations, such as where to place content or how to structure pages.

But you can’t have a good AI outcome without the correct data.

In digital analytics, collecting every click, tap, swipe, and conversion is key in order to predict user intent. So before jumping on the AI bandwagon, Denise encourages businesses not to overlook their data strategy:

“Everyone feels the pressure of creating an AI strategy. But you can’t have an AI strategy if you don’t have a data strategy first. Data is the main component of AI—it’s like having a machine without fuel. So you need to start with the data strategy for your organization. Then, you can build toward your AI strategy on top of that.”

— Denise Persson, Chief Marketing Officer at Snowflake.

2024 Digital CX Trends

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

Get my copy!

2. ROI on customer experience

According to Forrester, 84% of tech leaders expect spending growth in data and analytics, with (you guessed it) the AI tech category getting the biggest budget boost.

Although budgets are set to increase next year, the pressure will still be on tech, marketing and product teams to prioritize spending. This is where measuring the impact of CX optimizations and the return on investment (ROI) will be crucial.

Digital experiences must be tied back to revenue, cost of doing business, customer lifetime value and even sustainability. It’s often surprising to see that even large brands don’t have complete visibility into the performance of their website and apps and the impact that UX design can have on revenue.

It’s crucial that all teams work on shared insights to ensure that the changes they make have a positive impact on the business. Tim shares his thoughts:

“Measuring AI and making things actionable for data practitioners to execute will be key in 2024. So, turning data into reality and actually rolling it out. One of the things that my team struggles with is that we have all this data but have limited resources to execute those things. So how do we prioritize our work to have the biggest impact?”

— Tim White, VP of Marketing at Snaplogic

3. Scaling experimentation and optimization

Today, most businesses are set up to analyze data but not necessarily to take action.

In 2024, there will be a shift from speed to insights to speed to action. Experimentation provides businesses with the perfect opportunity to safely do this by showing that small incremental changes can make a big impact over time.

In fact, a recent survey by Kameloon revealed that organizations that invest in web experimentation are 350% more likely to grow.

Clearly, optimal scaling is crucial for businesses looking to drive results in 2024. Here’s Suman’s take on it:

“There’s always some buzzword flying around; first, it was the next-best action, personalization and now it’s Gen AI. But I think 2024 will be all about how you can scale effectively. It doesn’t sound sexy, but with all the great capabilities that are being introduced, it’s a matter of knowing who uses what and how they use it most optimally. So 2024 is going to be about optimal scaling.”

— Suman Patnaik, Vice President of Digital Analytics and Experimentation at Blackrock

Pierre also highlights that the economic uncertainty of 2024 will force businesses to be selective in their experimentation and optimization projects:

“People are still going to be constrained in 2024 by the macroeconomic environments. So it’s going to be about choice. We’ll have probably 20 ideas that we will want you to roll out as changes or optimizations, and we will have to find a way to select the five. It’s really going to have the best impact.”

— Pierre Casanova, Chief Revenue Officer at Contentsquare

4. Mobile-first optimization

Our 2024 Digital Experience Benchmark report showed that almost 70%  of all online visits now come from mobile, while just over 30% are from desktop. 

It also revealed that conversion rates on mobile fell last year, and are significantly lower than on desktop (2.19% mobile vs 4.03% desktop), meaning a mobile-first mindset is one of the biggest opportunities for businesses to make gains. 

Yet, the focus is still often on web-first. We see this flipped around, with businesses designing for mobile, and then scaling for desktop. And that’s where predictive mobile analytics comes in, helping businesses better understand mobile user behavior across devices and channels.

Alexandra highlights how important it is to understand user behavior to effectively optimize for each channel:

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

—Alexandra London, Head of Digital at Zoom

Take a product tour

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

Take tour

5. Insight-driven collaboration

Measuring CX is challenging not only due to fragmented tools and KPIs but also ownership.

CX is a cross-team, cross-functional and cross-journey sport. Tech, product and marketing teams must all align on common metrics with shared outcomes to deliver the experiences that people expect and deserve.

In 2024, digital analytics tools will help businesses democratize valuable data so that every function can access the same insights (without the help of data analysts or IT). Seamless data sharing and visualization will be key to fostering cross-team collaboration and insights-sharing.

Here’s what Paul says:

“The future of digital analytics is end-to-end; taking the user from start to finish. It’s about having a holistic experience with the customer. But it’s also about cookieless, multi-touch attribution and through-the-line analysis. So not having ‘above the line’ over here and ‘below the line’ over there. It’s about how can we bring them together so that we have a holistic view of analytics and digital.“

— Paul Mabb, Marketing Analytics Manager at Liverpool Victoria

Intuitive visualizations of your customers journey.

I want this product!

5. Private and secure by default

And that’s the way the cookie crumbles…

With the long-awaited phasing out of third-party (3P) cookies in 2024 and increased privacy concerns, businesses will need to take effective action to safeguard data security.

Consumers are more aware than ever before of their own data being exploited (thanks largely to the data breaches of leading brands). Government regulations have also become stricter, and companies are now required to follow increasingly stringent data protection laws—from GDPR in the EU to CCPA California.

A first-party data collection strategy will be imperative to creating meaningful experiences that are tailored to unique user needs. Analytics platforms must take a privacy-first approach to give website owners detailed insights into their user behavior without the use of 3P cookies.

Contentsquare is a good example of a privacy-first Digital Experience Analytics platform that uses intent-based customer data and insights to help businesses unlock a deeper understanding of customers without compromising security.

Veronika believes 2024 will be a balancing act between data protection and implementing CX trends like AI and hyper-personalization:

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

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

Get more insights into the latest digital analytics trends

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

Get the report to find out:

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

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

2024 Digital CX Trends

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

Get my copy!

The post Unlocking growth: 5 essential digital analytics trends for 2024 appeared first on Contentsquare.

These are questions that any digital team has to concern itself with nowadays. From shopping and browsing social media to catching up with friends and reading the news, users commonly switch devices throughout the day. This makes optimizing your digital experience a more nuanced process than we might like.

We dug into our 2022 Digital Experience Benchmark Report data to give you the latest trends and insights on mobile vs desktop usage, in the process answering questions like:

• Which device did consumers prefer in 2022?
• Is mobile really the way forward?
• How does digital behavior differ according to device? 

Mobile vs desktop usage in 2022: Mobile still dominated…

And the winner is… MOBILE.

58% of all online visits came from smartphones in 2021. If you read our report last year, you’ll know that mobile was already taking the lead with 64% of all online traffic in 2020.

… But it’s declining 

This -9% year-on-year decrease in mobile traffic shows that desktop is still critical to online life.

It’s important to note that the number of websites we studied has almost doubled from 2020 to 2021. This has led to a strong increase in the number of sessions we’ve analyzed and, inevitably, may have diluted these figures a little. Also, our data only shows mobile web traffic and doesn’t take into account traffic on mobile apps.

Mobile vs desktop usage: How important is mobile?

Looking back just a few years, we were touting a mobile-only world (with algorithm updates from Google and huge advancements in smartphone technology helping to bolster this claim). But today’s consumer is happy to shop on both desktop and mobile and we expect seamless experiences on both—so your strategy should reflect that. 

So although mobile was the device of choice for many of us, desktop still accounts for 39% of all online traffic. This slim margin indicates desktop sessions are still critically important to optimize! 

Moreover, the device you prioritize will also depend on your industry. We noticed for example that luxury, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals have a significant majority of traffic on mobile (between 73% and 76%). Something to think about!

Uncover trends for crucial digital KPIs

Access the 2024 Digital Experience Benchmarks Report and Interactive Explorer.

Access the Benchmarks

So why are conversions mostly on desktop?

If the majority of users are on mobile, then shouldn’t the majority of conversions come from mobile too?

Think again! Our data showed that the desktop is still the winner when it comes to converting customers.

Average conversion rate per device across all eCommerce industries

Conversion rates are almost twice as high on desktop devices, which suggests that users prefer to browse on their mobile devices and make purchases on their computers or laptops. 

Interestingly, conversion rates improved slightly on desktop too, going from 2.3% in 2020 to 3% in 2021. This solidifies the fact that brands need to optimize experiences across all devices to truly succeed. 

Understanding your mobile vs desktop spilt

It’s absolutely essential that you understand your mobile vs desktop split and prioritize your digital strategy accordingly.

If the majority of your traffic is via desktop, yet conversion rates are noticeably higher on mobile—or vice versa—it’s time to reconsider where you invest your time and resources for the biggest returns. How can you better incentivize your mobile customers to get more shoppers browsing via mobile?

Or, if desktop generates a much higher average order value, how can you better streamline your mobile to the desktop experience, such as allowing users to save items on mobile to then finish the conversion on desktop?

Download our full report to get all the industry-specific data and insights to fuel your 2022 strategy. 

Uncover trends for crucial digital KPIs

Access the 2024 Digital Experience Benchmarks Report and Interactive Explorer.

Access the Benchmarks

The post Mobile vs desktop: How to create a seamless user experience for both devices appeared first on Contentsquare.

December 2, 2021 – New York, USA – Following Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BF/CM) 2021, Contentsquare has uncovered new insights around the major retail and shopping weekend, creating a robust, detailed analysis based on real-time data from over 4 billion sessions across six industries and 21 markets around the world. The study covers the entire peak in sales at the end of the year and offers a detailed analysis of online behavior during this key period for retailers.

Even as retail begins to reopen some physical stores, the findings suggest that customers continue to pivot towards the ease and safety of online shopping during the biggest shopping season, with a significant lift in mobile compared to desktop traffic.

Key global findings from 1 October up to and including 29 November 2021 include:

• The Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend of 25-29 Nov. 2021, saw a +90% uplift globally (based on daily average) in mobile traffic compared to 1-31 October.
• In October, 62% of overall traffic was on mobile. During BF/CM, the mobile share of voice increased to +68%. During BF/CM, mobile traffic increased +90% over traffic levels in October. Finally, during BF/CM, desktop traffic increased +46% over traffic levels in October.
• Based on the above data, while traffic increased on both mobile and desktop, users were on their mobile devices significantly more than desktop users during the holiday weekend compared to October.
• Out of all the industries surveyed, the Consumer Electronics industry had the highest direct traffic (27.6%), the second highest was the Fashion Retail industry (27.3%), and the third highest was Grocery (24.9%).
• Global desktop traffic in Beauty rose +70.9% over the BF/CM weekend versus the rest of Nov. (1-24th Nov) whereas Consumer Goods only saw a +7.91% increase over the same period.
• Globally, paid acquisition drove the highest number of visitor sessions but direct traffic was the highest driver of buying sessions.

The Contentsquare platform analyzes customer behavior through trillions of anonymous web, mobile and app interactions, and transforms this knowledge into intelligent recommendations that increase user conversion, revenue, engagement and growth.

Contentsquare’s remarkable growth, which includes a $500M Series E fundraise in May 2021, and acquisitions like Hotjar and Upstride, have positioned the company to make great strides in innovation and global expansion. It continues to commit to global initiatives like digital accessibility — bolstered by its 2020 acquisition of AdaptMyWeb and subsequent launch of the Contentsquare Foundation — and digital privacy, with the launch of the industry’s first cookieless experience analytics solution. 

Methodology

Research of Contentsquare data from 4 billion sessions across six industries (consumer electronics, fashion retail, grocery, beauty, consumer goods and luxury) were taken from 21 countries (including the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, and more). Data was analyzed from 1 October to 29 November 2021.

Additional Stories Around Contentsquare’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday Data Analysis

• DCommerce (Italian), eCommerce & vendite natalizie: 7 best practice per migliorare la user experience dei clienti
• Appliance Retailer, eftpos Black Friday sales surge
• Branding in Asia, Mobile Shoppers Dominate Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sales Across the Asia-Pacific This Year

About Contentsquare

Contentsquare empowers brands to build better digital experiences. Our experience analytics platform tracks and visualizes billions of digital behaviors, delivering intelligent recommendations that everyone can use to grow revenue, increase loyalty and fuel innovation. Founded in Paris in 2012, Contentsquare has since opened offices in London, New York, San Francisco, Munich, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Singapore and Barcelona. Today, it helps more than 750 enterprises in 26 countries deliver better digital experiences for their customers. Visit contentsquare.com to find out more.

Media Contact

Erica Ashner

Contentsquare

Erica.Ashner@Contentsquare.com

The post Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2021: Global Mobile Traffic Increases by +90% 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.

As businesses continue to be affected by the Coronavirus outbreak, a picture has emerged over the past few weeks of which sectors are recording a steady influx of online visitors, and which are seeing only a fraction of the traffic they enjoyed pre-quarantine. 

And while the positive trends observed across “essential” businesses such as grocery stores may be obvious, other verticals have seen a more staggered return to conversions, as consumers resume some of their shopping habits and turn to digital to compensate for a brick-and-mortar economy on pause.

We’re analyzing billions of digital visitor sessions each week to bring you the freshest data from across industries. To do this, we’re capturing user sessions across more than 900+ websites from all over the world — that’s 32 billion pages, 26 countries and 22 industries. To chart the progression of several KPIs (traffic, transactions, pageviews, and more), we’ve been comparing the most recent data to the period immediately preceding the global reporting of the outbreak (or, the first 6 weeks of the year which we call the reference period).

Here’s what we found this week:

Traffic And Transactions Continue To Grow As Online Shopping Habits Resume

Traffic and pageviews are still growing steadily week on week (+6.9% and +8.3% this week, respectively), contributing to a significant increase to both KPIs since the onset of the outbreak. Compared to the pre-Covid-19 reference period, the volume of digital sessions has shot up by +17.4% across industries, with visitors viewing almost +25% more pages today than they were pre-quarantine. 

Transactions have also surged dramatically since the first stay-at-home orders in the West, but this past week recorded a slightly more subdued increase than the previous week (+2.1%). Still, overall, the shutting down of brick-and-mortar commerce in many regions of the world has led to a +39.9% surge in the number of transactions.

Grocery Sector Continues To Grapple With Huge Digital Checkout Lines 

Traffic to grocery sites is still surging, with +26% more visits last week than the previous week. Transactions are stable with a slight drop (-2% last week), suggesting many grocery stores are still ironing out some of their supply chain issues.

Despite this minor dip last week, transactions are still up +75.5% from the beginning of the crisis, reflecting the mass adoption of online grocery delivery services over the past few weeks.

Retail Tech And Home Decor Still On Growth Path

Traffic to retail tech sites was up +12% last week from the previous week, contributing to a whopping +78% increase in visits since mid february  when the outbreak started in the west. The volume of transactions is also up — +9% this past week and +62% compared to pre-covid19 levels. With a huge swath of the population now working from home, and quarantine measures refocusing entertainment spend, having up-to-date tech gear has shifted from nice-to-have to necessity.

And all this working from home has contributed to the increased traffic to home decor / DIY sites. Last week saw a +9% increase in the volume of visits, driving a +19% surge since the start of the crisis. And home sector transactions have followed suit — up +120% from the start and +17% since the previous week.

Jewelry / Watch, Luxury and Fashion Sectors Bounce Back And Beauty Purchases Slightly Down

While traffic to jewelry sites is much below normal levels, it was slightly up this past week, with a +13% increase from the previous week. And while transactions did grow by +24% over the same period, the industry is still reeling from a -20% drop in sales since the beginning of the crisis.

Similarly, Luxury has continued its recovery, with transactions trending up (+6% last week), and while traffic was flat this past week, engagement was up, with +4% page views last week.

Fashion also continues its recovery: for 4 weeks in a row now the sector has recorded transaction increases, adding another +5% increase to the previous week’s +30% surge, with the sector now exceeding normal levels. As consumers everywhere reintroduce some of their regular shopping patterns into their homebound routine, some industries that were experiencing upward trends were less strong this past week. Recent increases in traffic for the beauty / cosmetics have resulted in a +9% increase in visits since start of the outbreak, while transactions are now up +70% over the same period, despite a -13% drop this past week.

Join our webinar next week, From Convenience to Necessity: How the Coronavirus Is Impacting the Grocery Sector. Featuring our Chief Strategy Officer Jean-Marc Bellaiche, this insight-packed webinar will share our latest findings on customer behavior and how the grocery industry is adapting to the new reality — April 16th, 1pm.

Hero image via Adobe Stock, by triocean

The post Impact of Coronavirus on eCommerce: A Week Of Consolidation And Stabilization (Update 7) appeared first on Contentsquare.

After weeks of working from home, working out from home, socializing from home, and doing just about everything from home, data shows that consumers everywhere are in the mood for a little home improvement. With a +22.8% increase in the volume of visits to home decor/DIY stores last week (compared to the previous week), it seems that many have come to the realization that working from your bed is not all it’s cracked up to be.

In fact, consumers have increased the time they spend browsing furniture and home furnishings by +46.8% since the start of the outbreak — the largest surge in browsing time observed across all retail sectors. And looking at the number of transactions, these home makeovers are not just virtual. Transactions on furniture and DIY sites in the UK and US were up +52.3% last week from the previous week, contributing to a +101.4 increase in home purchases since the start of the crisis.

So what exactly are consumers itching to change around the house?

How Towels And Linens Became The New Necessary

The volume of products browsed in the linens / bath linens category shot up +96% last week compared to the previous week, with transactions in this category almost doubling over the same period (+96%). It could be that staring at their bed every day is the push many need to finally get rid of that old duvet cover, or it may be less of an aesthetic decision and more of a practical one.

While 85% of people in America may own a washing machine, legions of renters in major cities like New York don’t, relying instead on laundromats — considered “essential businesses” in many areas of the country. But with millions of people trying as much as possible to avoid trips outside the home, and the CDC recommending you don’t share personal household items when caring for someone who is sick, it makes sense that consumers are looking to increase their supply of sheets and towels.

Home Is Where The Office Is

If you’ve ever subscribed to a furniture store or large retailer email list, your inbox is probably inundated right now with invectives to smarten up your home office. Home office inspiration landing pages and promotions on office furniture have been proliferating the past couple of weeks, and a quick scan of the data shows that consumers are indeed looking to upgrade their work stations.

Visits to pages featuring desks, lighting and tables were up significantly this week from last — in that order (see table above). Those three categories also accounted for the greatest increases in the volume of purchases, with a +95% increase in table sales, +92% in lamp sales and +87% for desks.

Spring Has Sprung

For those lucky enough to have a garden or yard to sit or play in to offset cabin fever, it’s hard to not notice that, even during a global pandemic, plants will bloom in April. Pages featuring garden items and outdoor furniture got +33% more attention this week than last, and the volume of transactions on these items was also up +33%. And with supply chain issues becoming a regular occurrence on grocery stores around the world, victory gardens are making a comeback.

Other product categories that are seeing more traffic and purchases include kids’ room decor — +16% increase in volume of products browsed and +44% more purchases this week compared to last. And purchases of sofas and armchairs have also recorded somewhat of a surge, with a +66% increase in purchases from the previous week.

The growing interest in home furnishings and decor is very much in line with the generalized surge in eCommerce traffic and transactions recorded in the past couple of weeks. Total traffic across sectors was up +3.2％ last week from the previous week (+10.3％ since the start of the crisis) and transactions were up +18％ (+32.6％ since the start of the crisis). As consumers navigate a new reality without access to brick-and-mortar shopping, their reliance on digital is now almost entire, and for many brands websites are adjusting to becoming the only store. And with the overall conversion rate up +82.6% since the beginning of the outbreak, the home decor sector seems to be carving out its place as one of the necessary digital businesses.

Join our webinar next week, From Convenience to Necessity: How the Coronavirus Is Impacting the Grocery Sector, featuring our Chief Strategy Officer Jean-Marc Bellaiche, this insight-packed webinar will share our latest findings on customer behavior and how the grocery industry is adapting to the new reality — April 16th at 1 pm.

The post Sheltering In Leads To Home Improvement appeared first on Contentsquare.

At Contentsquare, we have a rich ecosystem of technology and strategic partners, built around the needs and business objectives of customer-centric companies and experience-driven brands.

We spoke with Gregory Ng, the CEO of Brooks Bell, and asked him for his thoughts on experimentation and personalization in the age of experience.

Take a product tour

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

Take tour

Can you tell us a bit more about Brooks Bell?

Founded in 2003, Brooks Bell is a consulting firm focused on building world-class experimentation programs for enterprise brands.

Working out of our headquarters in Raleigh, NC, we’ve spent the last 16 years helping companies better leverage their data, technology, and workforce to learn about their customers and deliver a smarter and more profitable online experience.

Our team is 43-strong and made up of creative thinkers, data scientists, developers and strategists. Everyone—from our operations team to our senior leadership—has a genuine appreciation for the art and science of optimization and a deep understanding of the challenges of experimentation at top-tier companies.

Our client roster consists of many large enterprises and recognizable brands that have trusted our team to assess their experimentation maturity and consult on multi-year “test and learn” roadmaps to achieve true customer-centricity.

What are some of the different ways you work with businesses?

Most of our engagements begin with a maturity assessment to benchmark and measure the growth of an experimentation program. This comprehensive, data-driven review scores your program against our proprietary framework consisting of six main categories: culture, team, technology, process, strategy and performance. The results of this assessment are used to create an actionable roadmap to get your program to the next level. What that roadmap looks like and the scope of our services depends on where your program lies on the maturity spectrum.

For clients that are very early in their experimentation journey, we offer a “we do, they watch” type of partnership. In this, our team comes in and fully manages a client’s experimentation program: learning their business and customers, organizing data, building a strategy, launching tests and analyzing and reporting the results. This partnership model is most effective for programs that need to prove the value of testing before going all in.

For clients that are a little further along, we take a more collaborative approach focused on educating what is needed to build a high-functioning program In this type of partnership, our team works alongside theirs. As we run end-to-end tests, we teach the team our methodologies, practices and frameworks. Through this model, we’re able to build the foundational knowledge and practices to set the experimentation program up for scale.

Finally, as the experimentation practice becomes more mature, we transition our services to be less tactical and more strategic. We’ve helped many clients bring their experimentation efforts fully in-house through building training and on-boarding programs, aligning the experimentation process across teams, establishing an Experimentation Center of Excellence, and offering strategic advice in response to new trends, technologies and business challenges.

How critical is experimentation for driving innovation today?

Critical is putting it lightly. 

In order to compete in today’s market, companies need to have a scientifically sound method in place to learn about customers, to change and to innovate—all while limiting risk, streamlining operations and reducing costs. Experimentation offers the best way to accomplish all of that.

That means, for us, our value is not simply in running tests and helping our clients make more money—though that is definitely a major outcome of our efforts (and one that we’re very proud of). Rather, our work is about empowering our clients with the data, skills, processes and technology to use testing to glean powerful customer insights AND operationalize those insights across your entire organization.

How do you help brands elevate their experimentation/personalization strategy?

Our Maturity Assessment is really only the tip of the iceberg here. Over the last 16 years, we’ve built and honed many frameworks, training programs, practices and even proprietary technology to help our clients elevate their testing and personalization strategies.

For instance, after witnessing some very messy brainstorming sessions, we developed our ideation methodology, which provides a guided approach to developing and prioritizing test ideas in a large, cross-functional group.

Our Insights framework offers a method for connecting your experiment results to bigger picture customer theories and insights.

And finally, we built Illuminate, our testing and insight management software, to help program managers store, share and learn from their A/B test results. Fun fact: Illuminate was originally built as an internal tool to help us keep track of our client’s tests. In 2018, after many years of tweaking, testing, gathering feedback (and some rave reviews from our clients), we decided to make it available to the public.

These are just a few examples of how we provide value to clients. I should also add that we host Click Summit, an annual conference where digital leaders gather to swap ideas and share tips on testing, personalization, analytics, and digital transformation.

Click Summit trades in all the typical things you’d find at a tech conference: sales pitches, powerpoint presentations and fireside “chats” held in giant auditoriums. Instead, the agenda is built around a series of small-group (15 people) conversations, each focused on a specific topic.

With attendance is limited to just 100 digital leaders, it’s a unique opportunity to tackle your biggest challenges by talking it out with people who have been there before.

What constitutes a good partnership for you?

We love partnering with companies and tech providers (like Contentsquare!) who share our vision of helping our clients find the people within their data and seek to make every day better through optimization.

There are tons of ways in which we can translate Contentsquare’s excellent user experience analytics into optimization opportunities.

Here are a few off the top of my head:

• Defining and prioritizing your customer segments, uncovering answers to complex questions about your customers and their journeys to and through your website
• Uncovering and optimizing the most profitable areas of your website, as well as solving complex UX issues
• Building a testing or personalization roadmap using data from Contentsquare as well as other sources

What are your plans for the future?

When Brooks Bell was founded back in 2003, testing was in its infancy. Now, it’s rare that we come across a client that hasn’t run at least a few tests. This is exciting! It means we get to focus on working even closer with our clients and making a bigger impact.

I’m talking more than just conversion increases and revenue lift. The task before us no longer ends at proving the value of experimentation. We’re now in the business of generating insights. By helping companies learn about their customers and fostering experimentation at a cultural level, our clients will be equipped to deliver the best digital experience for their customers.

Investing in experimentation requires taking both a short and long-term view. We look forward to celebrating the day-to-day wins with our community, while also staying focused on the vision of building customer-centric, digitally-forward and insights-driven organizations.

The post Driving Innovation: How Brooks Bell is Helping Brands Achieve Experimentation Excellence appeared first on Contentsquare.