With today’s retail landscape becoming increasingly digital, the internet is often overwhelmingly populated by window-shoppers. This can bring many benefits for businesses in terms of their brand awareness and positioning. However, due to customers often visiting an online store but not actually purchasing a product, which 3 out of 4 shoppers do, this behaviour can prove a challenge for both businesses and marketers.
According to a survey by Shopify, a delay in loading times can increase abandonment rates by up to 20%. Whether there’s unexpected shipping costs, or a lengthy checkout experience customers who visit a website but don’t purchase a product have a great influence on brands conversion rates.
Due to this conversion pressure, marketers are pushed to get results, faster and more effectively. They are also increasingly required to engage with their consumers across multiple platforms, due to the social media age we are currently living in. As a result of this, marketers need smart tools to help them improve their customer experiences and optimise their websites.
Through the use of certain tools, businesses don’t always have to be experts on their conversion rates to be effective, it can all be done in one single platform. This reduces time and ensures that the business is working effectively, which in turn is perfect for ‘lazy marketers’, who can focus their energy on other aspects of their role. By using the correct optimisation tactics, marketers can easily meet the needs of the customers whilst also converting more visitors, with very little maintenance and technical skills required.
Getting the most out of A/B testing
‘Lazy marketers’ have a variety of options to optimise websites, especially through checkout pages. A recent discussion on this was the question of whether a single-page or multi-page checkout would perform better on an e-commerce platform.
There is a clear demonstration of this in Elastic Path’s A/B test case study, carried out in 2010. The company A/B tested it’s single and two-page options for checkout and discovered that letting a user complete the whole process on a single page had a great increase on their conversions.
This isn’t to say that single page checkouts are always the most effective option. Obviously, they do require fewer clicks which makes them a preference for customers that are less inclined to fill out forms.
Sometimes single-page checkouts can be annoying, due to scrolling. Which can make companies question whether they should put all the fields on a single page. ‘Lazy marketers’ have taken advantage of the new algorithms implemented into A/B testing, as once the platform is installed it allows businesses to automatically allocate traffic to the best performing variant in an A/B test. Previously those testing their website would have to wait until the end of a test to discover which version of their website was producing the highest revenue.
Optimising websites through nudging
A “nudge” is a term used to describe any change in the environment which steers an individual’s behaviour in a predictable way whilst preserving their freedom of choice. It is not a push, nor a shove, but a gentle nudge.
As our life is increasingly mediated by technology, nudging is widely utilised in shaping how our technological devices operate. When using these specifically-designed environments, we are often subjected to nudges unconsciously.
‘Lazy marketers’ that utilise optimisation solutions, such as nudges on their website can be reassured and feel relaxed that something is always working in the background to help improve their store revenues. Marketers and web designers are increasingly utilising nudges for optimising their websites, these can include anything from product recommendations, targeted ads or push notifications leading to the companies website.
Nudges can be set up in minutes and enabled with just a click of a mouse. There are no limits to the amount of notifications that can be created through nudges and for ‘lazy marketers’ it is perfect, as they can leave it optimising in the background forever. Nudging categories can range from anything to popularity e.g. who purchased the project and how long ago the purchase was, order soon nudge e.g. a time limit, creating a sense of urgency encouraging a quick conversion.
Personalisation for your Customers
Personalisation for customers is vital for businesses to thrive, ‘lazy marketers’ utilise a number of techniques to help optimise and improve their website.
Having a consistent message throughout the website is essential for any campaign. Using specialised personalisation techniques such as dynamic text headings can be modified according to what adverts visitors click through to arrive on the website.
For ‘lazy marketers’, personalisation is very beneficial. Once the headings are set up on the landing pages of the website, the process is simple. Through consistent messaging in the campaign, which is always working for every click through, this ensures that visitors feel like the brand has focus on ensuring that they have a unique and tailored experience on the website.
Persuasive Notifications and Website Optimisation
Persuasive notifications are similar to push notifications as they both communicate with the user, except rather than providing information, they will often urge the user to action. Persuasive notifications pop up when the user is already on your website and do not require permission in order to appear. They use live data from your platform to inform about products, which means no additional input for ’lazy marketers.’
With a platform that can be implemented within 5 minutes, persuasive notification tools are ideal for any ‘lazy marketer’ looking to optimise their website.
Social proof is the idea that we are driven to conform and will be influenced to copy others’ decisions and actions, especially when we are hesitating or feel as though we don’t have enough information of our own.
Social proof always applies to marketing and sales in companies. Various marketing strategies such as subscriber count, social shares or testimonials are all based on the social proof principle. Due to social proofs ability to provide information on the amount of followers, views, likes and subscribers social proof is a great tool for ‘lazy marketers’ as once it is is set up as it can create a big impact on how the audience perceive the website and can therefore influence their decisions.
It is clear that due to the social media age we are currently living in, everyone (especially marketers) are trying to squeeze everything into the allotted hours of the day. As counteractive as it may feel, if you want to be more productive, it may be better to engage in behaviours that seem lazy, but it is cognitively and physically exactly what marketers need to push through on tasks or challenges they may face. Utilising platforms that are available, which take minutes to set up, can be rewarding in the future – as they constantly work in the background providing never ending results.
