Attract: Creating a high-quality, intelligent user experience

You need a diversified portfolio of acquisition sources to attract people to your site. We believe that inbound marketing, where you attract people through organic search and quality content, presents a fantastic opportunity for growth when working with the right tools and processes.

We have short attention spans when browsing and shopping online. According to scientists, the age of the smartphone has shortened this span, from around 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds today (less than a goldfish!).

Ecommerce teams face a challenge: crafting customer experiences that capture the user’s attention and interest as soon as the page loads. This means creating contextually relevant content and experiences, and ensuring this content is accessible and can be reached by as wide an audience as possible. Here we explore six ways to help you achieve this.

Create high-quality landing pages

The first signal users get about your quality is the load speed of your web page. This is critical on mobile where slow loading drives exits. Ensure you have a “speed” champion to work with developers to fine-tune and shave off the milliseconds. You can use a stand-alone monitoring tool (e.g. New Relic), or you can use Episerver DXC’s built-in monitoring to identify potential issues.

A landing page needs four core qualities to be successful:

1. Fast load, e.g. prioritize rendering for important content
2. Contextually relevant, e.g. campaign landing page uses same creative as the campaign
3. Optimized content, e.g. core page elements follow SEO guidelines
4. Persuasive, e.g. use psychological levers like urgency and social proof to encourage response.

Your content strategy plays a key role in landing page design, defining the audience and shaping the messaging hierarchy. Customer-centric content that is also optimized for SEO (keyword relevant, unique, easy to read and engaging) provides a competitive advantage. It means you’re more likely to keep customers on the page and increase the likelihood of the page being indexed for relevant searches.

But don’t think that once you create a landing page you can forget about it. Keep an eye on the data, and test ways to improve KPIs like bounce rate, click-through rate and page value.

TOP TIP:

Make landing page testing a core part of your CRO (conversion rate optimization) program. The Episerver platform has built-in A/B testing capability to help you rapidly deploy tests and drive performance. It also has a Google Analytics widget that brings insights directly into the platform. This gives you instant feedback on the content and media you’re using to help you drive acquisitions and conversions.

Use a structured taxonomy

A website taxonomy provides structure and branching for user journeys.

Taxonomies are the unglamorous side of site architecture and technical SEO. They represent categorization for key data elements on the website, for example product categories and hierarchies.

Get this right, and you’ll have a site structure that makes sense to customers and helps them understand what you provide and how to find it. Get it wrong, and you’ll have a website that adds friction to user journeys.

It’s not uncommon for there to be a disconnect between how product buyers and merchandisers categorize products and where users would expect to find them on the website, or what category names they’ll be looking out for. You need to focus on your customers’ vocabulary and browsing needs.

A shallow catalog structure can actually make it harder for users to find relevant products

One caveat is that with intelligent faceted navigation, it’s possible to reduce the click path but this creates additional challenges for SEO. For example, how do you ensure maximum coverage in the search index for URL variations created by parameters added when using faceted navigation? Please see "Maximizing indexation opportunities for SEO" below for more information.

TOP TIP:

Create a visual mind map of your core product/ service catalog – are there any inconsistencies or duplication?

Run simple keyword research – do your classification labels align with what people actually search for?

Maximize indexation opportunities for SEO

Crawl budget is an important consideration. It’s the relative amount of time and effort search engines give to crawling your website, determined by site and page authority. The more pages you have, the longer it takes for search engines to crawl the site. They naturally prioritize pages that appear to have higher quality. You can help by controlling indexation to focus crawlers on the most valuable pages that you want indexed.

Use the following proven technical SEO practices:

1. URL schemas

A URL schema defines the rules for how a URL path is built as the user clicks through the website, providing URL consistency. For example, the schema would define normalization criteria such as only use lowercase

Set rules in the schema to prevent low value URLs from being indexed. For example, you don’t want a URL with a price parameter to be indexable (who searches for “mens jeans $50 - $100”?), but you’re more likely to want a URL with a color parameter to be indexed, such as red dresses.

2. Canonicalization

First, agree the primary version of a URL, e.g. https://www. mysite.com. Second, ensure all non-primary versions redirect to this canonical version, e.g. https://mysite.com has a 301 redirect to https://www.mysite.com. Third, ensure all indexable URLs have a self-referential canonical tag. In this way, if additional versions are created, they’ll reference your canonical version.

3. Meta robots tag

You can specify which pages to index and which to not, as well as controlling whether or not links on a page should be followed. At the most simple level, if you don’t want a page to influence the index, you add the ‘noindex,nofollow’ attribute.

4. XML sitemap

Auto-generate a list of all indexable URLs and use the priority property to tell search engines which pages are the most valuable. Set this to auto update as the site changes and new pages are added and old pages are removed.

5. Robots.txt

Here you can block specific assets and folders from being crawled. A good example is platform admin folders that aren’t public.

TOP TIP:

Ensure you can do bulk export/import from your CMS for SEO properties. A good example is 301 redirects, since doing this at scale manually is inefficient. It’s much easier to export a list of URLs with issues and then import and update a file with a 301 redirect URL list. Episerver has a number of add-ons that allow you to efficiently manage redirects, from the launch of a site throughout its evolution. SEO and URL management features are built-in to content and catalog management areas in the platform.

A high number of internal 404s provides a poor UX and could send a signal to search engines that the site isn’t well maintained.

Personalizing content

Ecommerce has become a more informative and interactive environment, as brands push for greater customer engagement. Advances in browser capability give ecommerce teams sharper tools to engage users with high quality content. Consumers buy more from retailers who personalize the shopping experience across channels.

Content personalization:

1. Navigational personalization

Show different content based on the user’s activity, for example, what they click, which pages they browse, and what products they view. This also includes redirecting to a specific landing page based on the referral source.

2. Customer-specific personalization

Using customer preferences and order history to show related content. It’s common to do this at the segment or group level.

3. Personalize using third-party data

You can use external data sources like social data and user location to contextualize content. For example, using a weather API to change the content being shown based on the current weather in the user’s location.

4. Predictive personalization

Putting an algorithm behind behavioral analysis to predict content that users are likely to respond to based on what other similar users have engaged with. Amazon does this well with product content.

TOP TIP:

Create landing pages that blend static, brandcontrolled content with dynamic content based on user signals like IP for location and URL parameters for traffic/campaign source. For example, if a user’s geolocation is New York and they’re visiting a category landing page, you could showcase trending products for New York shoppers. This could include integrating offers from New York stores, such as highlighting an event.

If it’s a known customer, you can personalize the page using customer account data. Episerver allows instant personalization of the customer experience based on session behavior and persistent profile and historic order information.

Adaptive web design

It’s good practice to detect user agents and then serve content that is appropriate to the device.

Adaptive and responsive aren’t mutually exclusive. A website built on a responsive code base can use server-side adaptive techniques to customize the presentation of content and features to mobile users. By using adaptive techniques, you can ensure the user gets the most contextually relevant experience based on how they use their device. For example:

• If the device can access location, provide a “Use Current Location” button for store location in addition to the basic store-finder
• If the device understands touch events, make image carousels swipeable in addition to the “previous” and “next” buttons
• If the browser supports HTML5 canvas, replace the static image with a canvas element.

Adaptive design [is when] layout is determined server side enabling the delivery of the most appropriate version of the site based on the functionality of the device. If responsive web design is the silver bullet, then adaptive is the gold standard, particularly for travel and retail brands.

- David Skerrett, Managing Partner, Nimbletank

TOP TIP:

Take time to learn how user browse and scroll behavior varies by device group. It’s important to know what content and features are most important based on the context of the user’s session.

Feed this insight into your design process and look to tailor the page design and UX where relevant. For example, many retailers have streamlined product pages for mobile browsers, prioritizing add to basket and multichannel features (e.g. find local store stock) over product details and other CTAs like social sharing.

By default, Episerver is a fully responsive platform, creating content templates that respond to different device types and screen sizes.

You can use adaptive web design to customize page templates to serve different versions and content based on the device accessing your website. In Episerver, these can be managed as specific channels.

The Episerver personalization engine can be used to target specific features or experiences for a specific device type.

Integrated campaigns

The user journey on your website needs to be joined up with your marketing campaigns. A marketing campaign doesn’t start and finish with the click, there’s an on-site experience that must be planned for.

Often referred to as “internal campaigns”, this involves planning a bundle of on-site activity to encompass one or more of the following:

• New landing pages
• New content on existing pages
• Marketing banners triggered by user behaviour, e.g. on a search results page
• Merchandising features, e.g. product recommendations
• Price promotions
• Rich media, e.g. video

This typically involves multiple stakeholders working together. Done manually, this demands smart project management to ensure activity is coordinated and not compromised by everyday work. However, if it is automated using work flow tools, this streamlines project delivery and ensures tasks are allocated and actions are scheduled, based on the go live deadline.

TOP TIP:

Map the key user journeys for a campaign, looking at all touch points on your website from the homepage through to checkout. Identify all opportunities for content, including promotions.

You can deliver creative content campaigns using Episerver’s content management and experience delivery capabilities. Use the project collaboration and approval flow tools to create a campaign and plan the go-live path to coordinate multiple stakeholders:

• Work on multiple content assets concurrently
• Enable localization of content components to support international campaigns
• Restrict access based on user permissions to control who does what, on which sites
• Quickly create and edit content using the drag and drop UI
• Combine catalog content and pricing changes along with discounts and associated banners to the same campaign with one-click publishing.
• Projects and approval flows seamlessly control what individual stakeholders need to do and when. Only users with publish rights can schedule the campaign to be published.

Attract – key takeaways

• Ensure your core platform architecture supports technical SEO
• Use customer behavioral and transaction data to personalize the on-site user journey
• Use a platform that can create contextually relevant landing pages at scale
• Build organic campaigns with leading-edge marketing tools

Engage: Creating a UX aligned with commerce journeys

If marketing drives the traffic for acquisition, it’s an understanding of user needs and journeys that helps ecommerce teams create engaging online experiences to push users into conversion funnels. Customers expect more than a functional website – they’re used to being immersed in online experiences, driven by interactive features (e.g. product finders) and relevant content.

Ecommerce teams face an engagement challenge: building websites that satisfy customer needs and inspire them to take action, while ensuring the path to purchase is optimized and efficient across devices. Here we explore five ways to help you achieve this.

What you’ll learn:

• Combining content and commerce to provide a seamless user journey
• Smart site search: key features to engage users
• Creating browsing experiences aligned with goal/task completion
• Adding value through product enrichment
• Tailoring merchandising to individual users

Create an amazing customer shopping experience

Editorial-led brands like J. Crew are built around high-quality lifestyle content to help drive commerce, and lifestyle brands like Free People engage customers through high-quality visual content (both owned and earned). Other retailers are catching up and content marketing budgets are increasing.

Content is an integral component of the ecommerce path to purchase. Content can help tackle barriers to purchase (e.g. providing reassurance about brand credibility, like customer reviews) and persuade people to take action by providing useful, relevant information (e.g. a video showcasing product quality).

Let’s look at five key ways in which content can contribute to commerce journeys:

1. Format content to suit multiple marketing channels

Brand and message consistency is important. Marketers should use a content platform that can repurpose content for multiple channels, creating custom content components that align with the core message and campaign design. An approach where you create content once and publish it many times reduces production costs and time to market. For example, KappAhl uses Episerver to push lifestyle content from the website out into native apps to support customer retention campaigns.

2. Align product with related content

This can be achieved manually or via an automated content-knit approach. The manual approach is to tag content with related products when you create a new content asset. This requires the content authoring area to be part of the ecommerce platform or configured to enable product tags. Webpages also need to be able to pull dynamic product data into content pages, e.g. current price, stock availability.

Free People inserts product links within blogs via manually created text links. Unfortunately, it doesn’t update the links when the products are out of stock – 404 isn’t a positive UX.

Norrøna uses Episerver to create engaging content pages that also sell the products through collection and product links.

Automation reduces manual effort but requires more coding. You can automatically associate products with content based on metadata, so the product associations are created on the fly. You can integrate with Episerver Find or other third-party merchandising tools to manage product associations. Another way is to set rules to automatically remove product links when a product or webpage is unavailable, e.g. out of stock items.

3. Use data to personalize content experiences

Customer preferences and browsing/purchasing history can be used to tailor the content that is surfaced during the user journey. You can do this based on past behavior, or triggered by customer segments. For example, Episerver can target content to visitor groups that can be persona or commerce based, and has connectors to CRM and marketing automation systems, including Salesforce, Microsoft, Marketo and more.

4. Localize content for international relevance

True localization requires the adaptation of content to suit the local market, not just translation of copy. For example, in the Middle East some images used in Western markets may not be appropriate, and the use of color varies country by country.

Your CMS should support parent-child relationships between site versions, so content can be inherited and localized, or separate content can be created for a specific version. This also requires publishing rules that enable edit and publish permissions to be controlled at user level.

5. Localize price and promotion

Price sensitivity varies by market, so converting your base price into a local currency equivalent may not give you price parity with competitors. Many retailers adopt zonal pricing strategies, where the local price point is set based on market demand and consumer expectation, e.g. local recommended retail price.

This is a major challenge for international retail where currency fluctuations can make exchange-rate driven pricing uncompetitive. Retailers like ASOS experienced this when the British pound was strong, introducing zonal pricing to key markets to remain competitive. Pricing based on geography is commonplace in the US, with evidence that big brands like Staples, Target and BestBuy use variable prices based on a user’s location and proximity to a competitor store. Tools like Profitero help retailers monitor nationwide and zonal prices for pricing intelligence.

The importance of content to B2B ecommerce

According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2016 Content Marketing Trends report, sales is the second most important metric for B2B content marketing and 60% of content marketers say producing engaging content is their top challenge. (e.g. a video showcasing product quality). Budgets are also on the rise – 51% of B2B marketers intend to increase their content budgets in the next 12 months.

TOP TIP:

Understand price elasticity in your local markets and set your price point to ensure you’re competitive with the market. Make sure you’re commerce platform can support zonal pricing with local RRP in the product catalog.

Within Episerver, local pricing can be done by applying an exchange rate to your base product price, or with a custom local price point in the local market currency. You can also adjust price based on user type, applying price at the customer level based on customer type (through login credentials).

Episerver supports all single and double-byte character languages globally. It allows you to define trading markets to target content, product assortments, pricing in local currencies and campaigns with associated promotions and discounts.

Making site search work for your customer

Forrester Research found that 43% of visitors navigate immediately to the search box, while searchers are two to three times more likely to convert compared to non-searchers. There’s evidence from many retail websites that search plays a vital role in driving conversions and average order value. (e.g. a video showcasing product quality

Five ways to turn search into a tool for high-quality UX

1. Dynamic learning

A typical search implementation is to return results based on query matching, with a defined set of rules for the order of display, e.g. show in stock items first, in alphabetical order or by date added to the site.

Intelligent search uses machine learning to automatically update the order of results based on previous user interactions, so items that frequently get clicked and bought are prioritized. While there is a logic to this, there is also an element of selffulfilling prophecy; items “above the fold” in the first place get the most visibility, so are more likely to be clicked. This is where faceted navigation plays a key role. If the filters help users, you’re more likely to get users narrowing down results and clicking on what’s most relevant to them.

2. Indexing multiple content types

This supports content knit. You can index multiple content types and include them in search results pages. In retail ecommerce, a standard combination is product + blog. The benefit to the user is being able to narrow down search based on the type of content that’s most relevant to them, and it extends the reach of your content assets. This is more important when you have powerful and inspirational brand or campaign content or educational content, which both help customers in the evaluation stage and help to push customers through to the next stage.

3. Typeahead/predictive search

This is an expected pattern, established by big brands like Google. As the user starts typing, best matches are displayed in real-time, which speeds up the journey to a product and helps customers make a purchase. With dynamic learning, the suggestions adapt based on user click behavior so predictive results mimic user browsing patterns. You can also segment the typeahead suggestions based on content type, adding more control to the user over what result they want to see.

Five ways to turn search into a tool for high-quality UX

4. Related queries

This is something pioneered by Amazon. On the search results page, you can showcase other search queries that might be of interest to the user based on the search they just performed. There are different options for related queries:

• People also searched for…
• People who searched for “your query” ended up buying….
• Related brand searches
• Related product searches
• Trending searches

5. Fuzzy Logic

This refers to a search algorithm’s capacity to understand degrees of truth, rather than absolutes. For example, a search for “blue drss” isn’t an exact match for “blue dress” but there's a high correlation between the two. In the real-world, site search has to deal with misspellings, synonyms, natural language queries an abbreviations, to name but a few. It's imperative that logic is in place to handle these exceptions and minimise the risk of a failed search, or inaccurate results.

Ensure your platform supports multiple dictionaries to help you manage product synonyms and translations. For example, flip flops in the UK are called thongs in Australia, and the search engine needs to understand the relationship.

TOP TIP:

Bring typeahead search suggestions to life with an image for products and key data to help users, e.g. price, title, availability. If returning different match types, use a visual cue to differentiate.

Publisher Dorling Kindersley uses Episerver’s search solution to provide smart typeahead matches, including content label (showing whether it’s a product or not), product title, snippet and image.

Episerver Find includes an autocomplete API to track customer queries so that they can serve as predictive typeahead search terms for others. The Find admin interface allows you to review and configure autocomplete terms.

Providing smart navigation tools

Ecommerce navigation should focus on helping users find information quickly and with the least effort possible. A small change to navigation can have a profound impact on UX and task completion, directly impacting your revenue.

Proven techniques for ecommerce navigation:

1. Flexible site-wide menu

The labels and positions in the site-wide menu should be editable via the CMS. This gives the business control over what to prioritize and when, helping with seasonal variations in the product catalog. If the menu is automated from the product catalog, you lose on-site marketing control.

You should also include visual content in drop-down menus. This can help improve click-through rates by highlighting trending content such as new brands and category/brand specific promotions. A CMS-driven approach also helps you avoid system-generated labels for categories, tailoring labels to help users and support SEO marketing

2. Adaptive faceted navigation

When you dig into user behavior at page level, you discover that use of navigation and filters varies considerably. For some categories, price can be the most used filter, for others it’s brand and color. Smart navigation responds to user interactions and prioritizes faceted navigation options based on actual usage. This can help speed up time to product and improve add-tobasket rates. The simplest execution is a drag-and-drop CMS interface, which Episerver supports to enable editorial control.

You can expand this into personalization based on user preferences and browsing history, for example pre-selecting favorite brands or pre-sorting products by price from low to high, because that’s the user’s default setting.

Proven techniques for ecommerce navigation

3. Filters and pagination control

This is an expected pattern, established by big brands like Google. As the user starts typing, best matches are displayed in real-time, which speeds up the journey to a product and helps customers make a purchase.

With dynamic learning, the suggestions adapt based on user click behavior so predictive results mimic user browsing patterns. You can also segment the typeahead suggestions based on content type, adding more control to the user over what result they want to see.

4. Omni-channel navigation

Maximize the use of your website to enable multichannel user journeys. A key requirement is to enable users to filter products based on local store availability, which requires use of geodetection or the ability to set a preferred store. This is particularly useful to mobile users for on-the-go shopping, as it narrows the search down to products they can pick up locally.

Sears provides this functionality on its website, letting users etner a location to view local availability. Unfortunately, it doesn't excluse stores that have no matching products for the current selection, which adds unnecessary friction.

TOP TIP:

Don’t treat navigation as a one size fits all, sitewide solution. Look at how different types of user navigate through the site, and then create custom navigation menus based on the user type. For example, some users might be heavier blog readers, so ensure there’s a blog link in the top navigation menu and not just hidden in the footer. This is easiest to achieve for logged-in users where you have a fuller profile to match against.

Enriching product information

It’s common for product catalogs or PIMs to have base product data that isn’t optimized for online selling. This is exemplified by drop ship environments where product data quality from multiple suppliers varies. Ecommerce teams benefit from a platform that supports local product enrichment, enabling them to enhance core product data to make it web ready. The importance of this capability amplifies in international ecommerce, where each market could have subtly different product copy requirements. For example, to trade in China there are product attribute requirements that aren’t compulsory in other markets, so localization is critical.

TOP TIPS:

Create web-friendly product highlight boxes to summarize key features and emphasize selling points. Use persuasive copy to encourage users to add to their basket.

Episerver supports product enrichment locally, using a REST interface to support two-way updates between the platform and source systems in realtime or via batch updates. You can also apply brand controls to limit what users can edit, including locking down data fields completely and setting publish permissions.

Scandinavian retailer Hi-Fi Klubben enriches key products with web-friendly snippets and highlights: Episerver allows product content and assets to be managed in the structured Catalog Management tools. It also allows free-form content or other assets to be added to categories and products in the catalog in an unstructured way, allowing complete flexibility in copy displayed alongside products to engage customers.

Making merchandising relevant to users

Modern merchandising tools enable ecommerce teams to deliver highly targeted product recommendations based on user profile and behavior (browsing and purchasing). It elevates recommendations from being trading-led to customer-centric. Let’s look at five examples:

1. Location-based recommendations

Location can be detected on desktop, tablet and mobile. You can build product profiles for popular locations based on what users browse/buy most often when visiting from each location. You can find interesting trends in specific cities that can help tailor product recommendations.

2. Context-specific recommendations

Use the context of the user’s session to personalize featured products, for example using a weather API and showing products related to the weather in the user’s current location. This is more targeted than simply presenting the same products to everyone based on a general weather pattern.

3. Purchase-driven recommendations

Using browsing behavior data, you can promote the products that other users have gone on to buy after visiting the product page being viewed. Of course, you can use rule-based merchandising to surface related products, but the integration of other users’ purchasing patterns improves relevance

4. User browsing history recommendations

You can narrow down product recommendations to individual user behaviors, for example surfacing new products from their favorite brands (based either on previous browsing activity or stored preferences). It's possible to create a merchandising zone that appears individually personalised but is actually using the same logic for all users, so that it's scalable.

5. Device-specific recommendations

Can you isolate product browsing and purchasing patterns to individual device types? If so, you can set up business rules to segment product recommendations based on the user's device, via user agent detection.

TOP TIPS:

Think outside the box when planning recommendations. Look at non-standard data sources you can plug in to increase the relevance of your targeting. Using a weather API is a great example; few ecommerce teams do this. You can also integrate other data sources within the business, for example returns data to avoid promoting products that have a higher than average return rate/cost.

Episerver can manage or replicate returns data in the business. This data, along with other product or external data, can be used in business rules applied to prediction models for products and content recommendations.

Engage – key takeaways

• Design and control the user experience through content and commerce
• Reach and engage users through content that can be used across channels
• Speed up the path to product with smart search and navigation

Using conversion rate optimization techniques to improve conversion paths

Converting visitors is the ultimate goal for ecommerce, with activities at the attract and engage stage of the path to purchase designed to fuel the conversion funnel.

However, checkout abandonment rates are consistently high. According to Formissimo, the average checkout abandon rate in 2015 was 68%, and it has been consistently above 68% for the last four years. Baymard Institute runs an aggregate of 33 data sources for cart abandonment and the current average value is 68.63%.

There are proven techniques to nudge customers down the conversion funnel and increase checkout conversion rates. Here we explore six ways to help you achieve this.

Removing barriers to purchase in your checkout

First, set out criteria against which to evaluate checkout performance across devices, so you can benchmark your current performance. Sensible criteria include:

• Page load speed
• Form completion rates
• Page error rates
• Funnel progression (and exit rates at each step)
• Basket-to-order conversion rate (segmented by visitor type

Then define capabilities for each criteria that must be satisfied, and set about optimizing for each capability.

Examples of goals to set:

1. Fast-loading pages

Slow pages kill conversions, especially on mobile where users have less patience. A slow checkout increases user frustration and abandonment. According to Kissmetrics, a 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.

The Episerver platform is continuously optimized for performance at high scale. The Digital Experience Cloud includes CDN optimization for high performance of the site and media.

2. Reduce friction

Guest checkout and social sign-in can speed up checkout completion, reducing form filling and allowing users to access your checkout how they want to. If you don’t need a user to be signed in to purchase (membership organizations are one exception), you should provide guest checkout.

3. Minimize data entry

Streamline forms to show only required data fields. Don’t use the checkout to capture customer profile data, only what’s need to fulfill the order. Use the order confirmation page and post-purchase CRM campaigns to enrich customer data.

The more fields a user has to complete, the greater the delay to purchase and the increased likelihood of abandonment. We recommend reading the ClickZ Intelligence Report on ecommerce checkout optimization (requires subscription). It breaks down 34 ecommerce checkout capabilities with good practice guidelines, common issues to avoid and a checklist to benchmark your website against.

TOP TIP:

Don’t treat navigation as a one size fits all, sitewide solution. Look at how different types of user navigate through the site, and then create custom navigation menus based on the user type. For example, some users might be heavier blog readers, so ensure there’s a blog link in the top navigation menu and not just hidden in the footer. This is easiest to achieve for logged-in users where you have a fuller profile to match against.

Improving the impact of promotions

It’s important to understand your users and tailor promotions and offers based on their profile and/or browsing behavior. There are multiple ways to achieve this level of personalization:

• Display promotion banners as the user becomes eligible, e.g. based on their on-site activity
• Trigger a discount for returning customers based on previous purchases, e.g. customers who have spent more than $200 in last 3 months, show $20 voucher modal window
• Display banners that flag promotions the user could activate with further action, e.g. buy another X to get your 3 for 2 saving
• Integrate external data with merchandising tools to trigger context-specific promotions, e.g. It’s a rainy day in NYC - here’s $ off umbrellas to keep you dry!

It’s also important to understand local and seasonal influences. For example, a promotion that works well in the UK may have less resonance in France if customers are used to different promotion types from local retailers.

You also need sensible controls for creating promotions and managing triggers and exclusions. A few pointers:

• Ensure you can rank promotions to determine which one gets priority if a customer is eligible for multiple discounts
• Create dedupe rules to control what combination of promotions is permissible, to reduce the risk of over-discounting and losing margin
• Support the application of discounts at item and order level, e.g. $10 off all Barbour jackets vs. $20 off when you spend $100 or more
• Ensure that order level discounts are applied after line level discounts have been calculated
• For multi-site promotions, ensure you can restrict which sites are eligible for each promotion as well as creating a universal promotion.

TOP TIP:

Ensure you have defined the goals for a promotion before launching it. You can match triggers and rules to the goals to ensure the promotion is aligned with your commercial priorities. For example, if the goal is to reward loyalty customers, then you need to set exclusions for users who don’t fall into this segment.

The Episerver promotion engine allows you to do different combinations of promotions and use rules to auto select the best match. For example, based on margin/revenue it can discount the cheapest or most expensive option. You can also trigger seasonal pricing with targeted time-specific price events at customer, group and country level.

Guided navigation: product configuration

Product finders are an advanced form of site search, offering a structured way of pinpointing the most relevant products based on criteria matching. They suit technical product purchases, where users will have a specific set of requirements based upon a common set of variables. Rich product configuration can also boost conversion, providing users with customization options to tailor the product specification to their personal needs.

Scandinavian design company Bemz uses Episerver’s product configurator to allow customers to customize products based on fabric, with faceted navigation on the product details page. When you select a fabric, the product image is rendered with that fabric.

Guided navigation: product configuration

TOP TIPS:

If you launch a product finder, ensure that it adds value to your current navigation tools, like site search. A finder should align with the way users buy products, either providing a set of attributes where the user can specify the values they need, or through a question-based approach that aligns with the buying process.

Leading B2B ventilation company Systemair uses Episerver to provide a highly technical product configuration search. The selector is tailored based on the product data set and the most important product attributes for customers.

Remarketing and the art of persuasion

We know that more than approximately 68% of checkouts are abandoned, so remarketing to these visitors is an obvious marketing opportunity. Remarketing involves multiple tactics, the focus of which should be on addressing the barriers to purchase that resulted in the abandonment. You can, and should, test offers, but if the default response is to provide a discount, you risk training people to defer conversion until a remarketing offer has been received.

Consider the following approaches:

• Display a banner to users who exit your website with an active basket (you can do this via mouse movement detection on desktop, or when they use the browser navigation tools, e.g. back button)
• Use email remarketing for users who’ve not responded to on-site prompts – typically a three-stage campaign maximizes open and click rates, with the first email needing to be sent within one hour of abandonment
• Use display remarketing to extend your reach – if you don’t have a user’s email address, you can target them as they browse on other websites by displaying ads related to the pages they visited.

The example below from America Soda shows a slide-out panel remarketing promotion that appears when you close the browser:

TOP TIP:

Test the use of mouse movement detection to trigger a remarketing campaign as the user scrolls away from your webpage. If you wait until they use browser controls, such as closing the browser tab, then most browsers will display a browser prompt for the user to accept to stay on the page before your banner is visible.

However, make sure you test this carefully. There are reasons people move away from the page, and some of them are likely to come back without prompting based on their purchase cycle.

Driving optimization through data

According to a Venture Beat survey report, only 2 out of 36 companies failed to generate substantial ROI through CRO (conversion rate optimization). The report revealed that 173 of the marketers surveyed were able to achieve ROI of over 1,000%. Most websites don’t have a major traffic problem – the taps can be turned on quickly. However, almost all have conversion problems, both macro (broken checkout pages) and micro (disrupted user journeys).

You should focus on three streams of testing for your CRO program:

1. Tactical

Small improvements to webpages and user journey elements to drive incremental improvements, for example using social proof to increase add to basket on product pages.

2. Campaign-based

Testing on-site improvements to increase conversions from marketing campaigns, e.g. landing page testing.

3. Strategic

Drilling down into the mechanics of your product and pricing models to test variations that drive improved conversion. This type of testing typically takes much longer to plan and requires an iterative approach to understand trade-offs in revenue and order volume. For example, does dropping your price point increase overall revenue, or do you simply increase volume but at the same revenue level?

A good example of a strategic test is a SaaS vendor testing the impact of introducing a new premium price point with enhanced features. It’s important to adopt a data-driven approach, ensuring you use web analytics data and customer insight to help you identify priority issues impeding conversion and create hypotheses for testing. By all means let personal viewpoints inform the process, but ensure decisions are backed up with data and assumptions are validated. The better you structure and plan your tests, the more likely you’ll see a positive outcome.

TOP TIP:

Establish a process to operationalize testing. This means testing becomes a core business capability, not something one person in ecommerce does in isolation. You need a “testing champion” who will own the testing roadmap and ensure key stakeholders are engaged and educated on good practice. Find a way to make testing exciting, and publish successes to get attention.

You should also build out your CRO knowledge bank, capturing test results to help future planning and providing a data repository for employees.

Selling through content

Editorial content can be used to promote products through visual storytelling. Clickable hotspots can display the product’s quick-buy overlay to enable users to add it to their basket direct from the content page, without having to click through to the product details page.

For example, Norwegian retailer Bikbok uses Episerver to create lifestyle looks that users can buy through quickview product purchase hotspots:

Convert – key takeaways

• Optimize conversion rates with a structured approach to A/B testing
• Supercharge your ecommerce checkout by delivering a high-quality UX across all devices
• Increase the relevance of promotions through personalization
• Use remarketing to persuade people to complete orders before exiting
• Align promotion and discount triggers with your campaign goals
• Use advanced product guidance to speed up the path to basket

04 Care Keeping customers engaged through lifecycle marketing

If converting visitors is the ultimate goal of ecommerce, then delivering a high-quality customer experience throughout the customer lifecycle to maximize brand engagement and repeat purchasing is an obvious aim.

The age old adage that it costs more to acquire than retain a customer holds true for many ecommerce businesses. For example, US retailers like Target invest in Black Friday promotions for customer acquisition, not for revenue, with monetization being delivered by retention campaigns.

Here we explore five ways to use data to help improve customer retention through ecommerce.

Using data to empower customer service teams

It’s not uncommon for customer service agents to have to access multiple systems to answer a customer inbound call. Disparate data sources (CRM, web transactions, store transactions, loyalty schemes, etc.) increase the complexity of customer service, and reduce efficiency. Time that could be used improving customer satisfaction is spent scurrying through data sources to retrieve information.

Data-driven businesses use data to supercharge customer services, enabling a better quality of service, moving from reactive to proactive.

Data-driven businesses use data to supercharge customer services, enabling a better quality of service, moving from reactive to proactive.

TOP TIP:

Ensure your customer service team can view the promotions and discounts that a customer has (a) redeemed and (b) is still eligible for. It will help them flag opportunities to customers via inbound channels, which improves service relevance and also can help increase purchase value and frequency.

Episerver maintains a single business view across all operational data allowing consistent customer service experiences for the customer over the phone or when using an app in stores.

Episerver can also tightly integrate to Microsoft Dynamics AX for Retail. This enables organizations to support with Episerver breakthrough omnichannel customer experiences through the integration of Microsoft Dynamics’ best-of-breed ERP, Retail and Commerce functionality. This gives you the ability to align customer data for customer service representatives and store staff to help achieve a single customer view, including:

1. Current active shopping carts
2. Previous orders
3. Eligible promotions
4. Predictive recommendations

Multichannel customer service

Retailers have publicly stated that multichannel customers spend more than single channel customers (around 2.5 times more). Tesco revealed that multichannel shoppers spend 2.04 times more on groceries.

The true challenge with multichannel commerce is integrating channels to deliver a seamless customer experience, in other words ensuring customers can access information and complete tasks without barriers. In a multi-device world, the path to purchase has more steps, with people switching between devices (and channels) depending on the task and context of the visit.

A good example is stock availability. Store shoppers benefit from being able to look up stock availability online, so they can check the nearest store that holds stock without having to go through a lengthy inquiry process. They can also buy or reserve online for store pickup. Brands like Schuh even offer same day store collection. Online functionality facilitates offline conversion.

Again, it’s data that enables this. Retailers can send email campaigns to people who have visited/shopped in-store to promote a local event. They can also push in-store purchase and browse history into merchandising tools to improve the relevancy of offers. But this requires a joined-up data strategy, e.g. using in-store app activity (product scanning, beacons, push notifications) to capture customers’ offline shopping patterns.

TOP TIPS:

For example, Intersport uses Episerver to show customers local store stock availability for click and collect on the website. You can search for a specific location, and the nearest stores are shown with a visual indication of availability.

Make sure each environment supports the others to speed up the path to product. This means store location detection and stock availability online and in-store tech to enable delivery to home, for example assistants using smart terminals.

Localizing the ecommerce experience

Amazon exemplifies retailers that focus on reducing purchase friction. How does it do this? Among other things:

• Local country websites in the local language, e.g. amazon.fr
• Best-in-class delivery options to enable you to get what you want, where you want it
• Payment options tailored to the local market, e.g. cash on delivery (COD) in UAE.

Localization, or personalization, of service supports retention because it removes purchase barriers. Delivery is a key competitive edge; the ability to ship quickly, in bulk, to any destination provides reliability and convenience. Supporting the delivery option preferred by the customer increases the conversion opportunity

B2B focus

Episerver feature: variable pricing

B2B has long been a pioneer of tailored service, reflecting the buying cycles and procedures in different types of organizations. For example, finance is offered where companies need to pay on credit based on agreed invoice terms; not all businesses are set-up to enable employees to make online card payments.

Levels of service can be aligned with client size and spend, providing a more hands-on dedicated account management to key clients.

Variable pricing can also be offered. This can be as simple as reduced unit prices for bulk orders (see below), available to everyone, or custom pricing based on a company’s unique log-in credentials.

A good example of a strategic test is a SaaS vendor testing the impact of introducing a new premium price point with enhanced features.

It’s important to adopt a data-driven approach, ensuring you use web analytics data and customer insight to help you identify priority issues impeding conversion and create hypotheses for testing. By all means let personal viewpoints inform the process, but ensure decisions are backed up with data and assumptions are validated. The better you structure and plan your tests, the more likely you’ll see a positive outcome.

TOP TIPS:

For global ecommerce, ensure you can provide customer support to local markets on their terms, i.e. during their core hours of business, in the language that’s most convenient. Don’t expect them to adapt to your needs, that’s not customer service.

Of course there’s a balancing act. Initially you may not be able to justify the cost but if you’re serious about expansion, localized service is essential

Maximizing the impact of your order confirmation process

Retention marketing starts as soon as the order has been completed, on the order confirmation page. Too many ecommerce sites simply display the order details and send a copy via email.

Following a purchase, customers are usually highly receptive to your brand; after all, they’ve just given you money so they trust the website. This is the perfect time to encourage them to move to the next level of brand engagement:

Don’t miss this opportunity

Use your order confirmation page and email to drive further action. Test and measure to see what promotion works best

TOP TIPS:

Embed a Net Promoter Score survey on your order confirmation page and link to it via the email. You can set this up yourself or use a third-party tool. Below is an example of an NPS survey.

If a customer scores lower than an agreed threshold, say 7, ask them the main reason why you didn’t get a better score. You’ll capture useful qualitative data to feed into your CRO program.

Technology-driven customer self-service

You can use technology to enable customers to find the information they need without having to leave the site. The more questions you can answer within the browsing session, the more likely the customer is to complete the task they came for. Here are three examples:

1. Self-service helpdesk

Smart assistants provide a knowledge database that can be segmented to help customers drill down into the most relevant content. Content can be tagged and meta data applied to enable related items to be shown together, and users can vote content up and down, so the best answers are prioritised.

2. Live chat

This has proven invaluable for many industries in providing realtime customer assistance, improving customer satisfaction and conversion rates.

According to the Forrester “Making Proactive Chat Work” report, 63% of customers said they were more likely to return to a website that offers live chat as opposed to one that doesn’t. It beats other forms of customer service for satisfaction rates (73% vs. 61% for email and 44% for phone).

Live chat has evolved and now video chat is popular on some retail sites. Video live chat is a great way for customer service teams to connect personally with users, rather than relying on text.

3. Product Q & A

Product Q&A helps provide rich content on product pages, with experts and users combining to provide helpful information. Over time this builds a product level knowledge base, and flags to web owners when there are particular product concerns or issues. For example, a supplier of wooden toys may be frequently asked why the products aren’t FSC certified, indicating a need to reassure customers about environmental friendliness.

Q&As can be supported by FAQs. It’s important that FAQs update regularly, based on what customers are asking and the language they are using. The closer to your customers’ use of language you can make the content, the easier retrieval will be.

FAQs can be really helpful for complex products, such as software, where users have specific technical needs that they need to make sure you can meet. The questions and answers can be tailored to answer all common concerns, surfacing relevant content on product pages to help users in their purchase journey.

4. Forum

Forums suit some audiences better than others. For example, tech forums like Stack Overflow (positioned as “A languageindependent collaboratively edited question and answer site for programmers”) are incredibly popular and busy; a passionate audience fuels the content, with the website keeping an eye on moderation, policy and growth.

Forums provide an environment where people with common interests can share information and problem solve. The benefit to web owners is a thriving community where members are answering the questions and interacting with each other, and brand or product experts can be on-hand to guide and ensure forum policies are adhered to.

There are also retail examples where forums are successful. Cycling is a good example. Bike Radar, a hub site for cycling news, reviews and products (it has affiliate deals with retailers like Wiggle), has a vibrant forum; the Mountain biking forum alone has 114,450 topics and more than one million posts.

TOP TIP:

Use live chat proactively and show the chat prompt to users based on what their browsing behavior indicates they need help with. For example, if a user clicks to and from a product page more than once, inject the chat prompt to see if there are product questions you can answer.

Care – key takeaways

• Align data sources to empower customer service teams
• Use technology to increase customers’ ability to self-serve online
• Integrate online and offline data to provide a seamless shopping experience
• Make the most of your order confirmation page
• Provide proactive customer support to drive satisfaction