Recognized leader in digital transformation, partner at Highbridge, founder of Martech Zone, public speaker, author, podcaster & consultant.
Our firm helps clients digitally transform the user experience of their visitors online. During this process, we’re often met with resistance within the organization on the solutions we develop. Existing employees who have institutional knowledge have an inherent bias that often puts them in conflict with the techniques and processes that enable a customer to navigate a purchase journey online.
Of course, the knowledge of experts within the company is an essential component in differentiating their brand online and implementing the right messaging, offer and process used to develop a customer journey. However, there are a few critical dependencies that can never be underestimated (but often are):
• Experience: Spacing and simplicity play a significant role in the buyers’ journey. A form, for example, that requests 30 data elements so a company can present a perfect customized offer to a visitor sounds fantastic. When no one fills in the form, however, it’s not a solution worth implementing.
• Psychology: Visitors often respond to color, verbiage and trust indicators on a site. There’s a huge difference between actionable colors (blue can emote trust, gray is deemed unimportant) and value colors (black is luxurious, red may be a discount). Buyers often respond to personalized benefits over endless lists of features by the company. And buyers feel more trusting of a brand that promotes testimonials, case studies, awards and recognition throughout their site.
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• Behavior: Over the last few decades, we’ve educated digital visitors on how to navigate a digital experience. For example, buyers almost always look to the top right of a site for a means to contact the company. Buyers often look to the bottom right for a chat button. Buyers like a pricing page to determine their budget expectations. If buyers can’t find those elements, they may just abandon the site altogether.
For these reasons, a key component of every digital transformation implementation is a comprehensive integration with tag management and analytics so that we can test and measure every assumption. We would never disregard the opinions of those with institutional knowledge of their products or services, but we will always test their assumptions.
A seller is not a buyer. In sales, virtually every effective training program ensures that a salesperson has great listening skills. By listening, a salesperson can identify the pain points, budget, timeline and the key factors that will contribute to a sale. They can then personalize the sale to better illustrate the value of their product or service, the benefits of their product or service, and how they can meet or exceed the buyers’ expectations.
With digital transformation, your analytics platform is your means of listening to your visitors. By tracking their online behavior through to a conversion (a sale, a demo, an appointment, etc.), you will glean the critical data to help you to personalize and optimize your online journey. Analytics data isn’t anecdotal nor subjective; it’s objective information that can be statistically validated.
The benefit of having analytics properly implemented is that it makes it easy to combat the bias of your leadership, your sales, your marketing team and even your digital transformation consultant. Data isn’t personal; it’s data. When a client requests a change to their online experience:
• We first verify how we can measure its impact and implement the solution. This could be event tracking, conversion tracking, funnel visualization or even screen recording.
• We annotate the change within our analytics platform.
• We set reminders to run reports to measure the behavior before and after the change.
• We provide the team with the results and how it should craft our strategy moving forward.
Recently, we did this with a customer who was adamant that their e-commerce collection pages were too cluttered and that the array of filters, products and colors was distracting. We listened to them and developed an action plan to test their feeling:
• We ensured that we could track the use of filters in the conversion funnel.
• We modified the product order and defaulted the filter tabs to be hidden upon loading the page.
• We set a reminder to revisit and compare reporting in 10 days when they were likely to have thousands of visitors.
• We were able to easily conclude that, while visitors spent more time on the page, they stopped using the color filters and abandoned the page without making a purchase. Conversions from the collection pages were down 80%, and filtered assistance in the conversion cycle dropped to 0%. Once presented with this data, the team acknowledged the results and requested that we return the page to its original design.
As you look to digitally transform your organization, it’s imperative that you test every assumption—especially passionate, anecdotal advice from your team or agency. Remember, your leadership, your management and your employees are not your buyers. Let your buyers—not your organization—determine their customer journey.
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Author: Douglas Karr, Forbes Councils Member